False Mirrors: The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea 3838215338, 9783838215334

Table of contents :
Foreword
Abstract
Introduction
1. Background
1.1. Articles, News Items, Blogs
1.2. Western Studies
1.3. Ukrainian Studies
1.4. The “Ideological Problem” of Russian Historiography
2. The Crimean Internet in Figures: 2011-2014
3. The Russian “Information Warfare Machine”. The Main Actors
4. Russia’s Activity. The Channels of Information Influence (October–December 2013)
4.1. Internet Forums
4.2. The GRU and Facebook
4.3. The Twitter of “Crimean Events”
4.4. The Blocking of Facebook
4.5. The Nationwide Anti-Ukrainian Campaign in Russia: The Crimean Dimension
5. The Ukrainian Response. Countermeasures Against Foreign Information Influence
Conclusions
References
Appendix
Short Biography of the Author

Citation preview

Andrii Demartino

False Mirrors The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea

False Mirrors

The author: Dr. Andrii Demartino studied history and government at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, National Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine, and V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law in Kyiv. Since 2019, Demartino has been Head of Strategic Planning and Analysis in the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Previously, he worked for the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, as well as for the Prosecutor General’s Office. He was also an advisor to First Vice-Prime Minister of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, as well as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Anatolii Mohyliov. Demartino is co-author of the book The Victory of the Impossible Over the Unacceptable (Samit-Knyha 2017).

UAV 13

Andrii Demartino

In his timely study, Andrii Demartino investigates the multitude of techniques how social media can be used to advance an aggressive foreign policy, as exemplified by the Russian Federation’s operation to annex Crimea in 2014. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Demartino traces the implementation of a series of Russian measures to create channels and organisations manipulating public opinion in the Ukrainian segment of the internet and on platforms such as Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal, and Twitter. Addressing the pertinent question of how much the operation to annex Crimea was either improvised or planned, he draws attention to Russia’s ad-hoc actions in the sphere of social media in 2014. Based on an in-depth analysis of the methods of Russia’s influence operations, the book proposes a number of counterstrategies to prevent such “active measures.” These propositions can serve to improve Ukraine’s national information policy as well as help to develop adequate security concepts of other states.

The author of the foreword: Oleksiy Danilov is Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. ISBN: 978-3-8382-1533-4 Distributed by

COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS

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Ukrainian Voices, vol. 13

ibidem

Andrey Demartino

False Mirrors The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea With a foreword by Oleksiy Danilov

UKRAINIAN VOICES Collected by Andreas Umland 8

Olesya Yaremchuk Our Others

Stories of Ukrainian Diversity With a foreword by Ostap Slyvynsky Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and Hanna Leliv

ISBN 978-3-8382-1475-7

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Nataliya Gumenyuk Die verlorene Insel

Geschichten von der besetzten Krim Mit einem Vorwort von Alice Bota Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Johann Zajaczkowski

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Olena Stiazhkina Zero Point Ukraine

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Oleksii Sinchenko, Dmytro Stus, Leonid Finberg Ukrainian Dissidents: An Anthology of Texts ISBN 978-3-8382-1551-8

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John-Paul Himka Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust

OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 ISBN 978-3-8382-1548-8

The book series “Ukrainian Voices” publishes English- and German-language monographs, edited volumes, document collections, and anthologies of articles authored and composed by Ukrainian politicians, intellectuals, activists, officials, researchers, and diplomats. The series’ aim is to introduce Western and other audiences to Ukrainian explorations, deliberations and interpretations of historic and current, domestic, and international affairs. The purpose of these books is to make non-Ukrainian readers familiar with how some prominent Ukrainians approach, view and assess their country’s development and position in the world. The series was founded and the volumes are collected by Andreas Umland, Dr. phil. (FU Berlin), Ph. D. (Cambridge), Associate Professor of Politics at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

Andrey Demartino

FALSE MIRRORS The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea With a foreword by Oleksiy Danilov

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7533-8 © ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2021 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Contents Foreword by Oleksiy Danilov................................................................. 7  Abstract ................................................................................................... 9  Introduction.......................................................................................... 11  1.  Background ...................................................................................... 21  1.1.  Articles, News Items, Blogs ................................................ 21  1.2.  Western Studies ................................................................... 23  1.3.  Ukrainian Studies ................................................................ 27  1.4.  The “Ideological Problem” of Russian Historiography .... 32  2.  The Crimean Internet in Figures: 2011-2014 ................................ 41  3.  The Russian “Information Warfare Machine:” The Main Actors ................................................................................................ 51  4.  Russia’s Activity: The Channels of Information Influence (October–December 2013) .............................................................. 71  4.1.  Internet Forums.................................................................... 75  4.2.  The GRU and Facebook ...................................................... 83  4.3.  The Twitter of “Crimean Events” ...................................... 85  4.4.  The Blocking of Facebook ................................................... 90  4.5.  The Nationwide Anti-Ukrainian Campaign in Russia: The Crimean Dimension ..................................................... 91  5.  The Ukrainian Response: Countermeasures Against Foreign Information Influence ..................................................................... 99  Conclusions ........................................................................................ 107  References ........................................................................................... 119  Appendix ............................................................................................ 139 5

 

Foreword The attempt to annex Crimea and Russia’s military invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 have become an unprecedented challenge to the global security system, an act of open aggression against a sovereign state. Being the result of the implementation of aggressive foreign policy strategies by the leadership of the Russian Federation, these events were certain to attract the close attention of scientists and researchers in various fields. For the first time since the end of World War II, the leadership of one of the countries in Europe has planned and conducted a full-scale military operation based on modern principles of warfare. As the use of nuclear weapons is becoming increasingly problematic, the confrontation will gradually but steadily focus on information and cyberspace, space and biotechnology. The techniques for information and psychological influence as part of a new type of hybrid warfare pose a particular danger, which has been clearly demonstrated in Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Modern challenges require an adequate response. The research of the author of “The False Mirror” on the role of social media in the Russian operation to attempt the annexation of Crimea will help to devise such countermeasures. The value of this study lies in the author’s

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focus on analysing real facts and reconstructing the sequence of events, which are looked at in the context of information warfare, one of the important elements of which is the use of social media. The book examines the specific techniques and methods of using popular social media by Russian intelligence agencies before, during, and after the temporary occupation of Crimea. Using modern channels of communication, Russian special services distorted the events, falsified information, and created a favourable information environment for the military operation. The study highlights the danger of the information component of warfare and emphasises the obligation of the state to be prepared, both technologically and organisationally, to resist hostile information influence. The materials collected and analysed by the author have not only historical value: the book contains practical recommendations for countering information and influence operations, which can be used in government decisionmaking. Oleksiy Danilov Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine Kyiv, April 2021

Abstract The thesis about the importance of the information component as one of the key elements of the so-called new-type warfare became generally accepted after the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by the Russian Federation in 2014. At the same time, studies in this field often rely on rather limited sources, tend to use overly theoretical approaches, and repeat the same facts and conclusions. Consequently, a wide range of practical techniques and methods of Russian information influence have not received sufficient attention. This study investigates the techniques of using social media to fulfil aggressive foreign policy tasks, as exemplified by the Russian Federation’s operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014. Analysing the level of information effectiveness of the “Crimean operation,” it is worth noting the synergy effect produced by combining the use of social media with the broader Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign. In this case, social media, which were trusted, and where the information received from other sources (primarily television) was verified, have played the role of a “false mirror,” which falsified the information. That, in turn, has produced the effect of double manipulation, via television and social media, thus creating the environment of lies. 9

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Based on the analysis of the techniques for Russia’s information influence, this study offers effective countermeasures, which may be taken into consideration when formulating the national information policy in Ukraine and other states. Keywords: the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the AR of Crimea, annexation, social media, the Russian Federation, hybrid warfare, new-type warfare, information operations, information influence, fakeaccounts.

Introduction The annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (AR of Crimea) by the Russian Federation (RF) in 2014 has posed an enormous challenge to the world not only in terms of political-military affairs but also in terms of scientific research. The issues of new-type warfare, the so-called hybrid warfare or nonlinear warfare (see Smola, 2016, pp. 68-71, for more detail), which have been discussed in the scientific community for a long time, have become a reality in Ukraine. The cyberattacks on Estonia in 2007 and the information and military operations in Georgia in 2008 were, inter alia, the demonstration of the RF’s hybrid/nonlinear capabilities. The phenomenon of new-type warfare, which has manifested itself on a large scale during the Russian aggression against Ukraine, requires consideration and systematic analysis. In this context, one should remember the so-called “Gerasimov Doctrine” when the article by the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the RF, First Deputy Defence Minister, Valery Gerasimov, published in February 2013 with the title “The Value of Science Is in Prediction,” in which he presented the concept of “new-generation war,” was interpreted as a revolutionary military theory (Adamsky, 2015). In fact, it was the British political analyst Mark Galeotti who coined the term “Gerasimov Doctrine” as a title for his blog post, in 11

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which he published the article by the Russian top military officer. However, later Galeotti (2018) was genuinely surprised that people believed that the tough Chief of the General Staff rather than a theoretician had managed to conceive the doctrine and regretted that his “marketing stunt” had such unintended consequences. By contrast, the American military expert Michael Kofman (2018) believes that the “Gerasimov Doctrine” is nothing but a myth and that no doctrine exists. In Kofman’s opinion, the article by Gerasimov “offers the interpretation of the American approach to political and military confrontation, which was perceived as formulating a new Russian doctrine of fighting the West.” Such reaction is quite typical of those politicians and members of the military who are looking for simple answers and noticeable details to explain what is going on, the researcher concludes. The Deputy Director of the Polish Center for Eastern Studies, Jolanta Darczewska (2014), holds the same opinion, making a point that the Russian theory of information warfare has been developed in opposition to the existing concepts of new-generation warfare as a response to the activities against Russia. This view is supported by the Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which mentions “the elaboration by a number of states of the concepts of information wars that envisage the creation of means of dangerous influence on the information spheres of other

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countries of the world” among other threats to the national security in the information sphere (Institute of Contemporary Development, 2016). However, the discussion around the article by the Russian general is illustrative of both the relevance of the very phenomenon of new-type warfare and the range of terminological, legal, methodological, and other problems arising out of it. The advent of the information technology age, which has created unprecedented opportunities but, at the same time, caused unforeseen problems, has further complicated the situation. For example, historians have to adopt old research methods while being in entirely new conditions, such as working with sources that are continuously updated and under the ever-present threat of their immediate deletion. Therefore, on the one hand, scholars have to advance their research carefully, scrupulously gathering facts and developing new methods, but on the other hand, they have to adapt to new circumstances quickly. As the famous futurologist Bruce Sterling wittily put it, “by the time you legally define what a “browser” is, the “browser war” is all over.” One of the least researched but the most popular in the entire range of new-type warfare issues is the role and place of the information component. Specifically, the problem of the use of social media by Russia in its war against Ukraine has been insufficiently studied, although the research into a local event makes it possible

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to reconstruct a comprehensive system of new techniques for information influence. From this perspective, the operation to annex the AR of Crimea is historically unprecedented. Moreover, the importance of new information and communication technologies is enshrined at the doctrinal level in the RF, and they are considered to be one of the basic “types of weapons,” independent and highly effective. The updated National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020 (Kremlin, 2009), the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (Kremlin, 2014), and the document entitled Conceptual Views on the Activities of the Russian Armed Forces in the Information Space (Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, 2011) place emphasis on information confrontation capabilities for military-political purposes. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the Minister of Defence of the RF, Sergey Shoygu, called information another armed service while speaking to Russian journalists in 2015 (TV Centre, 2015). Similarly, the Swedish researcher on Russian propaganda war Ulrik Franke (2015) has acknowledged that Russia’s pattern of action during the illegal annexation of the AR of Crimea adhered quite closely to “the official characterisations of information warfare.” Overall, a significant number of publications by Russian and Western authors are devoted to the main principles of information warfare and Russia’s approaches to it, the adoption of new technologies, and the

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expansion of the existing arsenal of information confrontation capabilities by the RF (Blank, 2016; Bratersky, 2014; Gerasimov, 2016; Holloway, 2017; Jones, 2014; Kapto, 2013; Kuralenko, 2012; Mandro & Gieber, 2017; Murphy, 2016; Naletov, 2012; Panarin, 2008; Patrushev, 2017; Turovskiy, 2016). Perhaps for the first time, researchers have been given the opportunity to study the practical aspects of modern warfare comprehensively, which raises a whole series of questions about the definition of terms, the methodology of research, and conceptual approaches. For example, one of the least researched and the most difficult for studying is the issue of using information and communication technologies as one of the key elements in implementing the RF’s plans of external aggression. The magnitude of danger and the effectiveness of the information component of hybrid/nonlinear warfare have been demonstrated during the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the armed aggression in eastern Ukraine. Almost all researchers recognise the role of social media as a crucial and state-of-the-art “type of weapons,” although it remains the least studied. The situation is complicated by the absence of methodologies for assessing the effectiveness of information influence, which hinders the objective analysis of the role and significance of social media in the Crimean events of 2014. At

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the same time, the recognition of the information component’s importance has become an indisputable imperative for a wide range of scientific studies. Considering the above, the research into the use of social media by the military-political leadership of the RF in the operation to annex the AR of Crimea is extremely relevant. The main problem of the existing research on the topic done by national and foreign scholars is that these studies are too theoretical, rely on rather limited sources, tend to use overly general approaches and definitions, and repeat the same facts and conclusions. Consequently, a wide range of practical techniques and methods of Russian information influence have not received sufficient attention. Nevertheless, it is worth noting the meticulous analysis of the theoretical foundations of the RF’s information warfare, as exemplified by its most revealing Crimean operation: the analysis of goals and objectives, the audience, channels, key themes, methods and techniques, psychological and manipulative techniques applied, the examples of falsification, and historical narratives used. All of this has made a significant contribution to history, psychology, sociology, public relations, information security, and military science. However, in terms of applying information and communication technologies, the very techniques of their implementation are not elaborated upon: where,

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by whom, how, when, and in what way they were employed. As a rule, widely made assertions that Russia used social media extensively during the annexation of the AR of Crimea are insufficiently supported by facts. The real mechanism of the functioning of the Russian “information warfare machine” remains unstudied. Thus, the crimes of the Russian information aggression committed during the annexation of the AR of Crimea are not associated with any names and surnames, dates and places, conditions and reasons, which is important not only for the objectivity of scientific understanding of the problem but also for devising effective countermeasures and enabling Ukraine to file cases in international judicial and law enforcement institutions. While agreeing with Yu. Fedorov (2016) who warns against excessive theorising and deflecting attention away from analysing Russia’s seizure of Crimea and the operation in eastern Ukraine, it’s worth noting that the difficulty of examining the information component of hybrid warfare is largely related to the novelty of the phenomenon. New situations put new issues on the agenda, which have not arisen before; therefore, there is no experience of solving these problems. A notable example is the emergence of a phenomenon that can be called an online mirage, i.e. the illusion of an unlimited amount of factual material under the conditions of its ultrafast self-destruction or deliberate deletion. The

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world of modern communication technologies is shaping an entirely new information reality—the opportunity to instantly create and permanently delete content that may constitute an important historical source. For example, groups and communities created or functioning under surveillance by Russian intelligence agencies, which had intentionally engaged in anti-Ukrainian activity, were “mopped up.” Therefore, scholars do not have access to the materials in question. Moreover, some part of research needs to be conducted at the time when events unfold, in particular, monitoring the mass media space to identify the technical aspects of waging information campaigns by Russian intelligence agencies, such as key messages, sources, publishing frequency, speakers, semantic relations, and links between groups/communities and accounts. In this case, the factor of time is crucial to making a correct and accurate assessment, since information is being destroyed, or it is becoming difficult to access under the layers of “junk information.” As to studies by Russian scholars, despite being actively involved in meticulous research work in the field of information security and cybersecurity, there is a conspiracy of silence about the “Crimean events”—propaganda or nothing. This research does not aim to cover all the aspects of Russian information warfare in the operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014. It attempts to reconstruct the facts and events related to the techniques of using

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social media for fulfilling aggressive foreign policy tasks by the leadership of the RF. The study investigates one of the tools of new-type warfare, which can lay a foundation for further comprehensive analysis.  Performing systematic and structural-functional analysis makes it possible to study the mechanism and principles of the Russian information machine’s functioning in depth and suggest adequate countermeasures, which will contribute to strengthening the national security of Ukraine. This objective is especially relevant against the backdrop of the increasing influence of social media on every sphere of life and the ongoing aggressive policy of the Kremlin towards Ukraine, which requires continuous analysis and an appropriate response. The results of this research can also be used by the authorities in Ukraine and NATO member states and by international institutions for devising strategies, doctrines, instructions, and methods for countering Russian information expansion.

 

1. Background From the very beginning, scholars in Ukraine, Europe, and the USA have been paying special attention to the events of the annexation of the AR of Crimea in 2014: their causes, effects, and the outlook. The Russian perspective in this respect is somewhat peculiar, as will be discussed below. As a rule, the issue of the information component of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation is integral to such studies. However, in most cases, only fragmentary research has been conducted into the use of social media in the RF’s military operation to annex the AR of Crimea, which has not revealed any specific details and has been confined to general assertions. 1.1. Articles, News Items, Blogs Although seven years have passed since the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula by the RF, the range of available sources remains rather limited, and the materials of intelligence agencies will be inaccessible for an indefinite period of time. Considering this fact, non-academic sources, among others, are growing in importance: articles, news items, and blogs, which have become a prompt response to the events of the time, although they undoubtedly require a cautious and critical approach. Investigative journalists were the first to reveal the existence of the covert system for manipulating public opinion on the Internet in general and on social media 21

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in particular, which was sponsored by the Russian authorities. Russian, American, and Ukrainian journalists were the first to gather facts and evidence that strongly suggested the existence of the system for political moderation of the Internet and social media content in Russia and abroad, which was later used in the operation to invade Crimea. Due to the work of A. Garmazhapova (2013a, 2013b), D. Khachatryan (2015) of the Novaya Gazeta publication, P. Rusyayeva and A. Zakharov (2017) of RBC, Adrian Chen (2015) of The New York Times Magazine, the international group Vsquare.org (2017), and many others (Hnap, 2015; Lawrence, 2015a; Rezunkov, 2015; Seddon, 2014; Soshnikov, 2015; Volchek, 2015), the activities of the Internet Research Agency LLC (Agency) created by Ye. Prigozhin, a businessman with ties to the Russian President, were revealed (“Agentstvo internet-issledovaniy,” n.d.). It was the Agency that first implemented the system for manipulating public opinion to promote the interests of the Russian authorities, for which purpose it used fake accounts (bots) created on popular social media sites. The words “troll farm,” “Kremlinbot,” and “troll from Olgino” have become international Internet memes (a set phrase, usually ironic, that is spread quickly on social media sites, Internet forums, blogs, and messengers). According to the journalistic investigations, the Agency and other similar organisations were involved

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in the “Crimean events,” having left their “digital traces” in the RF’s influence operations against Ukraine. Although, as a rule, it is quite difficult to check the veracity of the facts stated in publications, when combined with other materials, they play an important role. 1.2. Western Studies Another significant series of publications related to the information component of the RF’s military aggression against Ukraine are studies by scholars from Europe and the USA. Among the most noteworthy are the comprehensive studies by Jolanta Darczewska (2014, 2016), Jаnis Berzins (2014), Ulrik Franke (2015), and Margarita Jaitner (2015). Analysing the components of hybrid aggression from the perspective of the Russian geopolitical theory and practice, in her case study The Anatomy of Russian Information Warfare: The Crimean Operation, Jolanta Darczewska (2014) concludes that the “Crimean operation” has become an opportunity for Russia to demonstrate the capabilities and potential of information warfare to the whole world. Jаnis Berzins (2014) from Latvia, one of the leading experts on the Russian military strategy, supports this argument and states that the “Crimean campaign” has been the RF’s impressive demonstration of strategic communications, which shares many similarities with the Russian intervention in South Ossetia and Abkhazia

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in 2008, while at the same time being essentially different because it reflects the operational realisation of the new military guidelines. Upon analysis of official Russian documents on the approaches to and principles of information warfare, the Swedish scholar Ulrik Franke (2015) concludes that the information war has played an important role in the success of the “Crimean operation”: “Russia projected the image of the annexation of Crimea as being irreversible both militarily and politically.” In the publication by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the Swedish Defence University researcher Margarita Jaitner (2015, p. 87) emphasises that Moscow has developed effective tactics for waging information warfare in cyberspace, which have been employed successfully in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. In the analytical article “Perception and Exploitation” devoted to studying Russian non-military influence in some European countries, the German researchers Stefan Meister and Jana Puglierin (2015) state that with the annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin has deployed instruments of “hybrid warfare” on a scale completely unexpected by the West. These means include not only the deployment of “little green men” but also media propaganda and support for Eurosceptic parties and politicians in European countries.

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In 2017, the American think tank RAND Corporation published the thorough study Lessons From Russia’s Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which offers a detailed analysis of the Russian foreign information expansion and emphasises that Moscow leveraged social media effectively to generate domestic support and spread vast amounts of disinformation about the Maidan protests. At the same time, RAND experts make the interesting point that the “Crimean operation” does not represent a case of hybrid warfare, but rather a fairly traditional covert operation to shape the battlefield for a conventional invasion (Kofman et al., 2017). The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence has published a noteworthy study on the role of strategic communications and social media in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict (Lange-Ionatamishvili & Svetoka, 2015, pp. 103-111). The important aspects of differences in standards, legal aspects, and strategies in the field of cybersecurity are analysed in the comprehensive Handbook of Research on Civil Society and National Security in the Era of Cyber Warfare published by the international academic publishing company IGI Global (Lukin, 2015, pp. 144-161). The cybersecurity expert Patrick Duggan (2015, p. 14) highlights the peculiarities of the Russian approach to information warfare, which combines infor-

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mation-technical and information-psychological influence techniques, which, in his opinion, has enabled Russia to outpace significantly any Western concepts. Answering the question of whether Russia indeed demonstrated new-type warfare during the annexation of the AR of Crimea, the Swedish Defence Research Agency FOI expresses some doubts, making a good point that “for many, Russia’s brazen and persistent propaganda created a sense of novelty” (Norberg et al., 2014, pp. 41-50). The academic paper by the scholars at King’s College London Oscar Jonsson and Robert Seely (2015, pp. 1-22) is devoted to studying modern Russian concepts of warfare, including its information component, in the context of the events in the AR of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The British researchers draw attention to the fact that the behaviour of the RF reflects the changes in society, where social media are becoming increasingly influential. Twitter and Facebook enable not only instantaneous news consumption and distribution but also crowdsourcing (involving a wide circle of voluntary assistants in spreading a message), which makes mass manipulation across the whole information spectrum possible. The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (2015) has conducted a comprehensive analysis of the RF’s information campaign against Ukraine, which looks at the facts of using social media during the

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“Crimean operation” and emphasises the increased significance of online communities. Summarising the review of the work of Western scientific thought in the field of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation, robust and fruitful discussion and consensus on Russia’s use of special information activities, which played one of the key roles during the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the events in eastern Ukraine, must be emphasised. At the same time, some positions differ from the prevailing view. For example, the above-mentioned think tank RAND Corporation calls into question the fact of Russia’s waging a special information campaign in the AR of Crimea, which they consider to be “a by-product of Russia’s information campaign to manage its own domestic opinion” (Kofman et al., 2017). The study draws attention to the fact that Russia appeared unprepared to manage the political dimensions of the annexation, and its information campaign in the aftermath of the seizure of the peninsula consisted of a series of loosely connected messages. This suggests that the decision to annex the AR of Crimea was not made well in advance. 1.3. Ukrainian Studies In the aftermath of the events of February-March 2014, a number of studies on the history of the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the Russian aggression in the Donbas were published in Ukraine.

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As early as 2014, the Institute of the History of Ukraine of the NASU prepared and published the comprehensive multi-author monograph Crimea: The Journey Through the Ages. The History in Questions and Answers, which emphasises the effectiveness of Russian state propaganda, “which overall ensured the massive support for the Russian authorities’ actions in Crimea by the Russian public” (Boriak & Smolii, 2014). In 2016, the analytical report The Donbas and Crimea in the Economic, Socio-Political, and Ethnocultural Landscape of Ukraine: The Historical Experience, Modern Challenges, the Outlook by V. Smolii, S. Kulchytskyi, and L. Yakubova was published. Analysing the reasons for the annexation of the AR of Crimea, the authors state that the information offensive against the foundations of Ukrainian sovereignty launched by the RF was going on without any resistance while the Kyiv authorities preferred to ignore the mounting threats and deepened “cooperation between Ukraine and Russia” in this area. Among the reputable scientific sources are also the multi-author monographs prepared by the researchers at the National Institute for Strategic Studies under the general editorship of Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine V. Horbulin, which were the first among national studies to examine Russia’s armed aggression in the context of the “hybrid warfare” phenomenon and look at the issue of the annexa-

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tion of the AR of Crimea comprehensively. In the monograph The World Hybrid War: The Ukrainian Front (Horbulin, 2017), a separate section is devoted to the subject of information support for hybrid warfare. The authors emphasise the RF’s substantial activity on social media, particularly on the most popular platforms on the territory of the former Soviet Union, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, where “various thematic groups were created…various pro-Russian messages were spread.” In the monograph The Donbas and Crimea: The Price of Return (Horbulin et al., 2015), the authors present a general review of manipulative techniques used by the Russian Internet-based media during the annexation events. For example, the monograph states that “the entire communities of people who deliberately spread panic and false news aimed at creating the image of “the invincible Russian army” could be seen” on Facebook. In his studies, Doctor of Historical Sciences P. HaiNyzhnyk (2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c) covers the political and theoretical, geopolitical, сultural and historical, and foreign policy aspects of the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the armed aggression in the Donbas. In his work #CrimeaIsOurs. The History of the Russian Myth, S. Hromenko (2017), Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD), investigates, performing a careful analysis of sources and documentation, and debunks in a well-

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argued manner key propaganda messages of the Kremlin, which collectively create a myth about “Russian Crimea.” The works by M. Turanskyi (2017, 2018a, 2018b), in which he analyses the mechanism of the imperial aggression by the Kremlin against Ukraine, are noteworthy. Acknowledging to a certain extent the effectiveness of propaganda serving the geopolitical interests of the RF, as exemplified by the “Crimean events,” the author uncovers a gross distortion of historical facts on the part of Russia. The works by V. Horbulin (2014, 2016), O. Lytvynenko (2016), H. Pocheptsov (2014, 2015, 2016), Ye. Mahda (2014, 2015), L. Smola (2016), O. Shevchenko (2004, 2018), I. Rushchenko (2015), M. Hetmanchuk (2017), D. Dubov (2016), T. Isakova (2015), M. Doroshko and V. Baliuk (2018) are devoted to studying the Kremlin’s military and political expansion and its information component as a conceptually and institutionally formulated foreign strategy of the RF at the global and regional levels. A special issue of the National Security and Defence journal of the Olexander Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies (2016) has been devoted to the subject of hybrid warfare and its information and psychological components. In their works, V. Ohryzko (2015), V. Tkach (2016), V. Tolubko (2003), Ya. Zharkov (2013), V. Petryk (2006,

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2013), O. Saienko (2015), and a number of other authors (Pievtsov et al., 2015; Sasyn, 2015; Feklistov, 2010) examine the information component of hybrid warfare and systematically analyse the genesis of information warfare as well as the development trends of its forms and means. Among the sources forming the body of Ukrainian historical work on the annexation of the AR of Crimea, the materials of several international and Ukrainian conferences, seminars, and round-table meetings are of great importance: the international research and practice conference The Information Dimension of Hybrid Warfare: The Ukrainian Experience (the National Defence University of Ukraine, 2017), the research and practice conference Urgent Countermeasures Against Russian Aggression From Crimea: The Political, Legal, Economic, Managerial, and Social Aspects (the National Academy of State Administration Under the President of Ukraine, 4 September 2018), the international research and practice conference De-Occupation and Reintegration of the Information Space of Crimea: International Legal, Media, and Communication Instruments (the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, 18 April 2019), the 10th Ukrainian research and practice conference Current Challenges in the National Information Security Management (the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, 4 April 2019).

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Overall, the Ukrainian scientific community is actively involved in the discussion and research on newtype warfare in the context of the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the armed aggression in eastern Ukraine. 1.4. The “Ideological Problem” of Russian Historiography As to the body of Russian historical work on the “Crimean events” of 2014, the Russian historian I. Savitskiy (2017) has aptly described it. He notes the state of euphoria of researchers, especially at the early stage, the use of a limited number of sources, and a lack of clear understanding of the consequences of the events, which, in the scholar’s view, “resembles opinion journalism even when written by famous historians.” At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that, as opposed to studies by Western and Ukrainian scholars, Russian research into the issues of the RF’s information warfare against Ukraine is not in line with the official Kremlin discourse and will hardly be approved by the management of research institutions. The Kremlin’s position on the interpretation of the “Crimean events,” after the initial denial and the ensuing acknowledgement of the Russian military factor, is that “Crimean self-defence militia” was active on the peninsula, and the Armed Forces of the RF did not invade Crimea but were in place according to the international agreement (Putin, 2014). In this case, if there is no

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intervention, one cannot speak of military action or its components as, for example, influence operations. Hence the conceptual contradictions in the interpretation of the “Crimean events,” “reunification” or “annexation,” which has a decisive influence on the content and principles of research. As a result of such a high degree of politicisation of topics related to Crimea and due to the existence of ideological guidelines on their interpretation, the choice of subject matters available and the scope of research are narrowing, and the principles of historical objectivity are being undermined. Therefore, in modern Russian historical discourse, patriotic literature prevails, which lays the “historical foundation” for the manipulative idea about “originally Russian Crimea,” where “virtually everything is steeped in our common history and pride,” which was articulated by President of the RF V. Putin (2014). Examples of such ideological historical literature include the collection of essays The History of Crimea published under the aegis of the Russian Military-Historical Society (2015), the book Reunification by the Russian scholar P. Danilin (2015), the multi-author work The History of Russia From Ancient Times to the Present Day by the Institute of the Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Bokhanov et al., 2016), to name but a few.

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The urgency of completing the primary “ideological” task by Russian scholars has influenced other aspects of research into the events of the annexation of the AR of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol: social, economic, and ethnic. The theme of using social media as the information component of the annexation of the AR of Crimea, which is the subject of this study, has been given very little attention since it is not in line with the official Russian political thought. Isolated instances, which can be interpreted as such, are provided in “memoir” publications of the participants in the events, for example, in the book by O. Shirokorad (2016) Crimea 2014. How Was It? The author, somewhat uncharacteristically, emphasises the Russian military factor in the “Crimean events” and mentions the VKontakte group of the pro-Russian movement Republic led by the Sevastopol businessman, active participant in the “Crimean spring” and “people’s mayor” of Sevastopol O. Chaly. During the active phase of anti-Ukrainian protests in January 2014, the coordination group Sevastopol Resistance was also active on VKontakte. Overall, the positions of such scholars as I. Panarin and S. Rastorguyev can be cited as archetypal examples of the interpretation of the events related to the annexation of the AR of Crimea. I. Panarin is one of the best known in the West Russian scholars. Candidate of Psychological Sciences

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(PhD), Doctor of Political Sciences, professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, member of the Academy of Military Science, he is considered one of the leading information confrontation ideologues in Russia. Moreover, according to some sources, I. Panarin allegedly was directly involved in planning and coordinating the Crimean information operation. Some Western scholars even speak of the “school of Panarin” (Darczewska, 2014, p. 14). He is the author of dozens of publications on the theory and practice of information, psychological, and hybrid warfare and communication techniques (Panarin, 2006a, 2006b, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2017b, 2018). At the same time, it can be assumed that I. Panarin’s authority as an expert is somewhat exaggerated and is nothing more than the result of his prolific output of publications and active participation in public life. Sometimes, it appears that the author himself has fallen victim to his own information weapon when, for example, he suggests creating the Eurasian Rus as a supranational entity on the territory of the former Soviet Union led by a “Sovereign,” whom V. Putin must become (Panarin, 2009), and claims that modern Russia has developed from the Aryans, the Trojans, and the Etruscans. Some ideas of the Russian scholar are utterly perplexing. For example, in one of his public lectures, Academician I. Panarin (2017a) substantiates the symbolism

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of the date of V. Putin’s announcement of his presidential candidacy: “Putin from Veles—Grandfather Frost...to the right-believing Grand Prince Nevsky, and then to Nizhny Novgorod to Minin and Pozharsky...well, and after that, 18 March, the day of Apollo-Dažbog, who flew to the Hyperboreans, which miraculously coincided with the reunification of Crimea with Russia.” Figure 1

The Slide From I. Panarin’s Lecture Hybrid Warfare and 2018 (28 December 2017)

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A strong ideological charge of I. Panarin’s works calls into question their scientific value, which is replaced with massive output. It is not surprising, therefore, that he is not investigating the role of information warfare in the “Crimean events”; in his concept, the RF is waging the war against the “Atlantic civilisation led by the USA” rather than against Ukraine. Nevertheless, on 18 March 2014, the date of signing the treaty on the socalled “Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation,” I. Panarin published a post in the VKontakte group the Ideology of Russia stating that “comprehensive measures taken by Russia in several information confrontation areas (diplomatic, financial and economic, military), which had been designed and implemented

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under the personal control of V. Putin, have become a component of the ‘technique for victory.’” Another famous Russian scholar, who is justly called “the founder of the Russian scientific school of information confrontation” (Grinyayev, 2017) is S. Rastorguyev, Doctor of Technical Sciences, professor, an analyst at the Institute for Information Security Issues of Lomonosov Moscow State University. A pioneer in the field of the theory of information security, the author of the comprehensive studies The Formula of Information Warfare (Rastorguyev, 1999), Information Operations on the Internet (Rastorguyev & Litvinenko, 2014), to name but a few, in his works, he also avoided the subject of the annexation of the AR of Crimea. At the same time, the views he expressed in the public sphere were highly revealing. It is worth looking at Professor Rastorguyev’s comment on the lessons in information warfare for Russia within the Ukrainian context to understand, so to speak, the general “scientific discourse” in which Russian scholars engage: “Satiated with the blood of the shot south-east of Ukraine, the Kyiv junta will go further...they are fed with trophies, they trade in human organs removed from living people. And the larger number of their own people the death-squads kill, the better they live, the bigger pensions they receive” (Rastorguyev, 2014). At the same time, it is worth noting that there is a position that conflicts with the official interpretation.

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For example, Yu. Fedorov, Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD), a professor at the Metropolitan University Prague, defends this position. However, he is better known in the West than in Russia. In his monograph Hybrid War à la Russe, the researcher directly points to Russia’s top authorities as the instigators of the war against Ukraine for attaining the geopolitical goal of restoring the empire. Yu. Fedorov is investigating the driving forces behind the RF’s actions against Ukraine and the development and implementation of the strategy of external aggression by Moscow; he is studying the mechanism and principles of the Russian information machine’s functioning. Explaining Russia’s success in the lightning-fast annexation of the AR of Crimea, Yu. Fedorov (2016, p. 69) points to the shocking effect of the Russian propaganda campaign.

2. The Crimean Internet in Figures: 2011-2014 In order to investigate the reasons and preconditions for the annexation events, as well as the factors enabling such events, it is worth examining the territory of the AR of Crimea at that time as a future object of the annexation, particularly in terms of the availability of Internet access to the population, the penetration rate, the use of social media sites, the characteristics of the online community, and whether that can be considered an influencing factor. For example, according to the sociological research (see Table 1) conducted in September 2011 by the analytical centre Regional Programme Hromadska Dumka and commissioned by the Council of Ministers of the AR of Crimea, 33% of the Crimeans called the Internet the main source of information about the events in the autonomous republic. As part of the research carried out from 3 September to 10 September 2011, 1,200 people in six cities and six districts of the AR of Crimea were surveyed. The sample was representative in terms of the ratio of rural to urban population; the type of the sample was random. The survey was conducted through personal face-to-face interviews. The questionnaire contained a high proportion of measurement for qualitative data. The sampling error was within 2.75%. The survey was carried out in Russian. The research methodology

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had been tested in projects implemented under the aegis of international organisations. Table 1

The Respondents’ Answers to the Questions: “How Do You Find Out About the Events in Crimea? What Are Your Main Sources of Information?” The Questions Can Have More Than One Answer. % of the Crimean Population

The Sources of Information National television Regional television National newspapers and magazines Regional newspapers and magazines The Internet Conversations with friends and acquaintances I find it difficult to answer

October 2010

March 2011

September 2011

77

71

70

49

55

54

25

24

22

25

29

28

22

34

33

40

59

64

1

2

2

Note that according to experts’ estimates (Kulikov, 2012), the Internet penetration rate in the AR of Crimea was about 50% and second only to Kyiv in terms of the growth rate. Another research conducted by the sociological company Research & Branding Group in October 2013 (see Figure 2) showed that 42.8% of the Crimeans used the Internet at least once a day: 50% used the Odnoklassniki social media site, 48.3%—VKontakte, 21.1%—Facebook, and only 19.8% of the respondents did not use social media.

THE CRIMEAN INTERNET IN FIGURES Figure 2

43

The Respondents’ Answers to the Questions: “Do You Use the Internet and How Often? What Social Media Sites on the Internet Do You Use? What Crimean Online Publications Do You Read the Most Often?”

In 2014, according to the research by the Gallup Organization, as part of which 1,400 Crimeans were surveyed from 21 April to 29 April 2014, 56.0% of the population of the AR of Crimea had access to the Internet, which was higher than the national average (50.9%). The data on weekly use of social media sites by the Crimeans also showed a higher rate than in mainland Ukraine: 50.1% and 45.8% respectively. While answering the question about the top five most important sources of news and information, the respondents, along with the channels Russia 24, NTV, ORT (the First Channel), and RTR (Russia-1), named the

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VKontakte social media site. The research by the Gallup Organization found that 74.5% of the people surveyed used VKontakte, 66%—Odnoklassniki, 42.9%—Facebook, and 21.6%—Twitter at least once a week. In absolute terms, the rate of social media use by the Crimeans was as shown in Table 2, according to the results of the research conducted by the author while working in the Council of Ministers of the AR of Crimea in 2013-2014 (Demartino, 2018b). The research covered the 28 largest settlements with a total population of 1,121,928 people, or 57.1% of the population of the AR of Crimea. The methodology is based on processing the statistical data from the most popular social media sites in the AR of Crimea, VKontakte, Facebook, and Odnoklassniki, the content analysis of popular topics of messages and group discussions as well as methods and techniques for disseminating information about the events in the AR of Crimea and Ukraine in general. Table 2

The Total Number of Social Media Users in Crimea in 2013

Social Media Sites

The Number of Users (Persons)

The Number of Users (% of the Population)

Odnoklassniki

961,632

48.9

VKontakte

521,853

26.5

Facebook

108,900

5.5

THE CRIMEAN INTERNET IN FIGURES

45

Note that in the AR of Crimea, as in the rest of Ukraine, the trend towards the high degree of politicisation of Facebook, where senior government officials, leaders of political parties and civil groups, opinion leaders, and journalists had a presence, continued. VKontakte was characterised by a younger audience, and Odnoklassniki was widely seen as a communication platform for “housewives,” which it actually was. The VKontakte social media site had 178,106 users under the age of 20 in the AR of Crimea, which accounted for 34.1% of all the users of this social network in the region. By contrast, the audience over the age of 21 predominated in the Crimean segment of Facebook, with 78,320 registered users in this age group, or 71.9%. Interestingly, in terms of active online communities, the AR of Crimea was second to Kyiv, with 189 and 215 groups respectively, thus demonstrating active participation in social networking. There were about 189 active communities in the Crimean segment: on VKontakte—96 (666,512 members) and on Facebook—93 (157,035 members), which were mostly of an informational and entertaining nature (see Figure 3).

The Most Popular Crimean Groups on Social Media Sites

FALSE MIRRORS 

Figure 3

46

 

THE CRIMEAN INTERNET IN FIGURES

47 

Note that the indicators of the level of loyalty of the active online communities to the central Kyiv authorities are quite telling (see Figures 4-6). In 2013, among 189 active Crimean communities, 17 were loyal (9.0% of the total number, 46,586 members), 55—neutral (29.1%, 234,980 members), 96—disloyal (50.8%, 413,039 members), and in 21 communities political issues were not discussed (11.1%, 128,942 members). Figure 4

The Proportion of Crimean VKontakte and Facebook Communities by Loyalty to the Central Kyiv Authorities (2013)

11%

9% 29%

51%

Loyal Neutral Disloyal No politics

  While analysing the development trends in the information space three years before the events of 2014, the experts of the Regional Programme Hromadska Dumka warned of the signs of a dramatic change in the pattern of traditional communication. Against the backdrop of growing distrust of the mainstream media (television, radio, and newspapers), the process of their replace-

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ment with the Internet and direct contact between people was taking place. The segmentation of society into target groups led to their unification and contributed to the emergence of their own sources of information with the rapid notification and conceptualisation system. Figure 5

The Proportion of Crimean VKontakte Communities by Loyalty to the Central Kyiv Authorities (2013)

2,100% 19,800%

37,500%

40,600%

Loyal Neutral Disloyal No politics

  Figure 6

The Proportion of Crimean Facebook Communities by Loyalty to the Central Kyiv Authorities (2013)

2,200% 16,100% 20,400% 61,300%

Loyal Neutral Disloyal No politics

  However, this process is fraught with peril too. As the British journalist and author of Ukrainian descent Peter

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49

Pomerantsev (2016) noted, according to the research of the Northeastern University in the USA, people who do not trust the “traditional” media are more likely to perceive misinformation: “Surprisingly, consumers of alternative news, who are the users trying to avoid the mainstream media “mass-manipulation,” are the most responsive to the injection of false claims.” All of this will play a crucial role in the events of the annexation of 2014. Thus, at the time when the RF was conducting the military operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014, social media acted as fully-fledged communication channels, which were developing rapidly, achieving deeper penetration and increasing the degree of influence. Crimean online communities united the most active part of society, which was mostly disloyal to the Ukrainian authorities of the time. Considering the fact that the Internet had become a significant factor in social and political influence, with over 50% of the population having access to it, the Crimean Internet platform was fully prepared to play its significant role. The question was who would be the first to take advantage of the new opportunities.

 

 

3. The Russian “Information Warfare Machine” The Main Actors The analysis of the use of information influence techniques by Russia shows that in order to address foreign policy issues, Moscow uses a wide range of both government agencies and non-state actors, which act as a cohesive unit according to the same scenario. In Russia, the state bodies that control activities in the information sphere and whose work is related to international relations and security include: 

  



the Security Council of the Russian Federation and the Presidential Administration (AP) of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of the Russian Federation; the foreign-language media funded from the federal budget; the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.

The Security Council of the Russian Federation The Security Council of the Russian Federation was established by a presidential decree of 3 June 1992. The

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agency prepares presidential decisions on ensuring security, independence, and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. In 2011, by Decree No. 590 of President Dmitry Medvedev, the powers of the Security Council and its secretary were significantly expanded. According to the decree, the agency received the right to “form a state policy in the field of national security,” and the decisions of the Security Council became binding on all ministries and departments (Kanev, 2016). Since 2013, the Security Council has essentially become a major centre for strategic decision-making in the Russian government. It has turned into something of a “shadow government,” which has a significant impact on the main directions of public policy. However, one should not look for formal violations here. According to the law, it is an advisory body, and it can discuss anything to provide the conditions “for the President of the Russian Federation to exercise his powers in the field of national security.” Within the Russian political system, the Security Council is the key body where political decisions on exercising foreign policy influence, including information influence on a particular country, are legalised. Notably, when describing the agency’s activities over the past 25 years, the Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, said, “Every meeting of the Security Council chaired by the President of Russia is devoted to the most

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pressing issues… In response to the war unleashed by Georgia in South Ossetia in August 2008, the Russian Security Council decided to enforce peace on Georgia, recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and assist in establishing their statehood” (Yegorov, 2017). The Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation The Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation is a state body formed in accordance with paragraph “i” of Article 83 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The Administration provides support for the activities of the President of the RF and monitors the implementation of presidential decisions. According to the aforementioned Russian researcher on the Kremlin’s foreign and domestic policy Yuri Fedorov (2016, p. 146), the AP of the RF carries out the general coordination of Russian foreign policy propaganda, including the allocation of funds. At the time of the final decision (approximately the end of 2013) to conduct the operation to annex Crimea, a key role in the implementation of information strategies in the AP was played by: 

the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration (Aleksey Gromov) and the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration, Press Secretary for the President of the Russian Federation (Dmitriy Peskov), who coordinate the activities of the

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



Public Relations and Mass Communications Department of the AP of the RF; the Aide to the President of the Russian Federation responsible for foreign policy, Yuri Ushakov, who coordinates the activities of the Presidential Foreign Policy Directorate; the Aide to the President of the Russian Federation Vladislav Surkov, who supervised the activities of the Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation, which supported the activities of the President on the issues of cross-border cooperation with the Republic of Abkhazia, the Republic of South Ossetia, and Ukraine, as well as other neighbouring states. Surkov also coordinated the Presidential Directorate for Interregional Relations and Cultural Contacts with Foreign Countries.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation The main official representative of the Russian government in the international arena is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, which, in accordance with the decree of the President of the RF of 8 November 2011, ensures adherence to a single foreign policy of the Russian Federation. The Russian Foreign Ministry played one of the major roles in promoting the Russian interpretation of the events of the 2014 annexation. The MFA of the RF is the key body that uses the official rostrums of international organisations (such as

“INFORMATION WARFARE MACHINE”

55

the UN, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe) politically, ideologically, and for propaganda purposes. It speaks from the platforms of global and regional forums (such as G20 summits, the BRICS, the SCO, and the CIS) and international conferences, providing, among other things, distorted and falsified information about the role and place of Russia in the Crimean events of 2014. The Foreign-Language Media Funded From the Federal Budget Another important component of the Russian system for information influence aimed at addressing foreign policy issues is the foreign-language media funded from the federal budget. The TV Channel Russia Today. In 2005, Russia Today (RT) began broadcasting abroad to cover Russian public policy, domestic life, and international issues in line with the Kremlin’s priorities. The channel, which was founded by RIA Novosti, appointed the journalist Margarita Simonyan as its editor-in-chief. RT consists of four 24-hour news channels broadcasting from Moscow to more than 100 countries in English, Arabic, Spanish, and French. The channel is available to 700 million viewers (“RT,” n.d.). The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated that Russia Today is comparable in popularity to CNN, the BBC, and other leading U.S. and European TV channels and presents an alternative point of view on

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world events (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 2014). RT is funded from the federal budget of the RF and, as of 2012, was ranked first in the world in terms of public spending per employee, which reached $183 thousand per person (“Rosiisko-ukrainska informatsiina viina,” n.d.). According to the correspondent of the American TIME magazine Simon Schuster (2015), the global network Russia Today is the main weapon of the Russian government in information warfare. The News Agency Sputnik. In the autumn of 2014, the federal state unitary enterprise MIA Rossiya Segodnya founded the news agency Sputnik, which brought together several dozen foreign-language websites and was targeted at foreign audiences. Sputnik has regional offices in the United States (Washington), Egypt (Cairo), China (Beijing), the United Kingdom (London and Edinburgh), Uruguay (Montevideo), and Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek). The agency’s news sites are available in more than 30 languages, such as English, Spanish, Polish, Kyrgyz, and Serbian. Sputnik has about 14 million followers on social media platforms. The site receives the most visitors from Turkey, Germany, France, Brazil, and the United States (“Sputnik,” n.d.). Analysing how the Kremlin developed and implemented a “hybrid” conflict strategy in the information

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57

space and on the Internet, the French researchers Isabelle Mandro and Natalie Gieber (2017) noted, “RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik are funded by the Russian government and broadcast in several languages. They exploit issues that are sensitive for the West, such as the migration crisis, play on emotions, and often present a distorted and conspiratorial picture of reality.” The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation One of the important security agencies and a component of the Russian “information warfare machine” is the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, which includes two specialised units. The first is the 5th Service (the Intelligence Information and International Relations Service) of the FSB. Since 2009, it has been headed by Colonel General Sergey Beseda. According to online publications, this unit was created to return to the FSB its own foreign intelligence agencies, which after the liquidation of the KGB passed to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. The 5th Service of the FSB is engaged in foreign intelligence activities, in particular in the CIS countries. The leadership and officers of the unit have been repeatedly seen in Abkhazia, Transnistria, Moldova, and Ukraine (Rudomskyi, 2017).

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The online publication Georgia Online reports that the head of the 5th service of the FSB was involved in the destabilisation of the situation in Georgia in 2008 and 2010. In particular, according to one version published by the media outlet, the Georgian Party opposed to Mikheil Saakashvili was formed under the control of Sergey Beseda, for which purpose the Kremlin allegedly gave about $30 million to the party’s co-chairman Irakli Okruashvili (Rudomskyi, 2017). In addition, according to the Ukrainian group Information Resistance (2014), on 20 February 2014, Colonel General Sergey Beseda and a group of FSB officers arrived in Ukraine after the tragic events surrounding the killings of the participants in the Euromaidan protests by security officers. The Information Resistance group states that Sergey Beseda arrived to influence the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. According to one version, these very people were behind the organisation of the separatist congress in Kharkiv and Viktor Yanukovych’s flight to Russia. The signs of Sergey Beseda’s activity can also be seen in the hostilities in eastern Ukraine. According to media reports, the military formations controlled by the FSB and led by Colonel General Sergey Beseda are part of the militants’ military formations in the Donbas (Rudomskyi, 2017).

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The second unit is the Centre for Information Security of the FSB (CIB, the 18th Centre), a specialised FSB unit responsible for Russia’s information security. The CIB is the successor to the Computer and Information Security Directorate of the Counterintelligence Department of the FSB and is part of the Counterintelligence Service of the FSB. Officially, the CIB investigates crimes in the field of e-commerce and illegal dissemination of personal data. It was in the Centre for Information Security of the FSB that the units were created to act on social media platforms in Ukraine. There is very little information in open sources about the activities of the CIB. However, in August 2014, during the escalation of the situation in the anti-terrorist operation zone, the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, stated, “The 18th Special Centre of the Russian FSB operates as a special institution, where over the last three days, about 1.5 thousand people have been deliberately sending messages and texts provoking panic on social media sites through robotic messaging systems around the clock” (Obozrevatel, 2014). Essentially, the FSB is the lead agency that ensures cooperation among all Russian state and non-state actors in performing tasks related to the detection, prevention, and dealing with the consequences of cyberattacks. As a result, the equipment and powers that the FSB has

60

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enhance its ability to carry out information operations outside the Russian Federation. The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation Given the specifics of the agency, there is very little information in open sources about its activities in the field of information warfare. However, the media reported that the SVR of the RF invited tenders for developing methods of “shaping public opinion” through social media under restricted tendering procedures. The statement of work included the task of “developing a special software package for the automated dissemination of information on large social media platforms and providing information support for activities according to prepared scenarios of influence on a given mass audience of social media” (Habr, 2012). It can be assumed that similar and other systems were used during the operation to annex Crimea. The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation Although the Russian army broke the resistance of the Georgian army during a brief campaign in 2008, Russia’s military-political leadership generally acknowledged that the experience of using the Armed Forces in the conflict was controversial. Therefore, as a result of the hostilities in Georgia, in the autumn of 2008, Russia’s political and military leadership decided to implement

“INFORMATION WARFARE MACHINE”

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a new stage of the radical military reform aimed to accelerate the transformation of the Armed Forces and give them “a new look,” focusing primarily on the participation in local conflicts on the territory of the former USSR (Barabanov, 2014). On 14 October 2008, the Russian Defence Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, announced plans for a fundamental reform of Russia’s military system. A massive armaments programme until 2020 was developed and adopted. Under the programme, 20.7 trillion roubles was expected to be allocated for new, modernised weapons and equipment as well as research and development (Cooper, 2015). In 2014, Russia ranked in the world top three in terms of military expenditure (“Spisok stran po voennym raskhodam,” n.d.). At the end of December 2011, the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation presented the aforementioned document entitled Conceptual Views on the Activities of the Russian Armed Forces in the Information Space, which for the first time established the operating procedures for the Russian Armed Forces in conditions of modern information warfare, determined the priorities of information support for conflicts, and referred to the Armed Forces’ task of interacting with the media and the public. As early as March 2012, the Deputy Prime Minister of the RF, D. Rogozin, was one of the first high-ranking Russian officials to emphasise the necessity for creating

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an equivalent to the U.S. Cyber Command in the Russian army. In the summer of 2013, the Russian media reported that by the end of the year a new service arm would appear in the Russian army, which would be responsible for the country’s information security. The main tasks of these cyber forces would include monitoring and processing information coming from outside and countering cyber threats. The officers who were being trained to serve in cyber forces would be required to undergo language training (Blagoveshchenskiy, 2013). Also in 2013, the Russian Defence Ministry announced a “big hunt” for programmers finishing their studies at civilian universities to fill the ranks of scientific companies [nauchnyye roty] that were planned to be created as units of cyber forces. According to the Defence Minister, Sergey Shoygu, with the appearance of these scientific companies, “a new generation of people who will move military science forward” may emerge (Turovskiy, 2016). On 12 May 2014, the federal state unitary enterprise Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR-TASS) announced that information operations forces had been formed in the Armed Forces of the RF. Their main purpose was to protect Russia’s military command and control and communications systems from cyberterrorism and the actions of a potential adversary. According to the source of ITAR-TASS in the Ministry of Defence of

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the RF, “The idea of creating such a force, designed for cyber and information warfare against a potential adversary, has been considered for many years. Last year’s revelations by the former CIA officer Edward Snowden about global electronic surveillance by the U.S. NSA only accelerated the decision-making process” (ITARTASS, 2014). The Russian media reported that these forces were formed as scientific companies in military units across the country. Graduates of technical universities, such as mathematicians, programmers, cryptographers, and engineers, were recruited. They were asked to mention programming languages and software algorithms they knew in their applications for admission. For example, Novosibirsk State Technical University announced a recruitment drive among students for the scientific company of the Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the RF in Sergiyev Posad to participate in “applying supercomputer technologies.” In September 2015, a cadet school of IT opened under the Ministry of Defence, and three months later, the first graduates of the scientific company of “information security special operations forces” graduated from the Military Academy of Communications (Turovskiy, 2016). In addition to students, the Ministry of Defence recruited hackers who had problems with the law. One of the managers of the cyber research company Crowdstrike Dmitry Alperovich actually confirmed this

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information: “When they notice someone technically savvy in the Russian underground, a criminal case is opened against him, and then he just disappears” (Turovskiy, 2016). On 22 February 2017, during his speech at a meeting of the State Duma, the Russian Defence Minister, Sergey Shoygu, officially confirmed the existence of information operations forces in the country. According to experts from Zecurion Analytics, a company that specialises in information security, Russia ranks in the world top five in terms of the number of cyber forces and the level of funding for them. The number of Russian cyber forces is estimated at about 1,000 people, and around $300 million might be allocated annually to finance them. Among the main activities of cyber forces, Zecurion experts mention espionage, cyberattacks, and information warfare, including various means of influencing the mood and behaviour of the population. Moreover, the more developed the country is, the more vulnerable it is to cyberattacks. As the head of Zecurion’s analytical centre, Vladimir Ulyanov, noted, “The dependence of various devices and equipment on the Internet will only grow. As a result, the vulnerability of individual users, their gadgets, and machines as well as the systems and infrastructures of countries will increase” (Kolomychenko, 2017). In full accordance with Russia’s concept of information and “hybrid” warfare, the Kremlin has created a

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holistic system of information influence on other countries to address foreign policy issues, which includes a wide range of both government agencies and non-state actors. As components of Russia’s external influence and “hybrid” warfare strategy, government agencies are responsible for making and implementing political decisions, including Russia’s official response in the international arena. No information or cyberattack launched by the Kremlin, such as Estonia (2007), Georgia (2008), Ukraine (since 2014), Syria (since 2015), has been carried out without the participation of government agencies, which first sanctioned each information attack and then supported it at the official level. Such an “information warfare machine” involves the comprehensive use of all means: from cyberattacks, the manipulation of public opinion on social media sites, and spreading fake news to direct hostilities supported by operations to create chaos in an enemy country. The advent of the Internet and social media in particular has given the Kremlin direct access to the populations of its adversaries, bypassing the goalkeepers, whose role was previously played by the media. Given the fact that the units of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation played a major role in the operation to annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the capabilities developed in the field of complex information operations have not remained unused.

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The opportunities of the new information reality were fully used by the Russian leadership while planning and carrying out military aggression against Ukraine in 2014, which continues to this day. Non-State Actors in the Service of the Kremlin The seizure of the buildings of the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Council of the AR of Crimea on 27 February 2014 marked the beginning of the RF’s aggression against Ukraine, a sovereign state. However, thorough preparation had preceded these events, particularly in terms of the modernisation of the Armed Forces of the RF and the fundamental rethink of the role and meaning of the information component in fulfilling foreign policy tasks (Demartino, 2018a). In the Russian system of new-type warfare, social media, as stated above, were given one of the key roles. For example, the Russian journalist and media consultant I. Klishin (2014) noted that the team of the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of the RF, V. Volodin, began the preparation for conducting external information subversion as early as the autumn of 2013. According to the journalist, the approach to working with the online audience was radically overhauled, and the emphasis was placed on the systematic manipulation of public opinion through new media tools.

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This idea is confirmed by the research conducted by Internet activists, who, by using the Google Trends service, identified the places where the centres for moderating social media content presumably operated. According to the analysis, small settlements such as Olgino, Yablonovskiy, Perekatnyy, and Zelenyy Gorod rather than cities with populations of one million or more were at the top by the number of search queries for the words “maidan,” “referendum,” and “right sector.” Such centres, in the opinion of the Internet researchers, emerged at the end of 2013, just before the “Crimean events” (otakvot.livejournal.com, 2015). One cannot help remembering that the aforementioned notorious Agency was informally known as the “trolls from Olgino” exactly because of the location of its head office in the Olgino area of Saint Petersburg. The fact of the Agency’s involvement in conducting foreign influence operations was also confirmed by the materials received by hacking into the company’s email in April 2014. The hacking group Anonymous International (also known as Shaltai Boltai) published the correspondence of the Agency’s management (Anonimnyy Internatsional, 2014). Analysing the materials of the correspondence, the Russian publication Novaya Gazeta noted that Kharkov News Agency (KNA) sponsored by Ye. Prigozhin, which had seventeen employees and nine contract workers, was operating as early as November 2013. The managers of the Agency and the ArtMedia

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Group company Dzalba, Sugrobova, and Pitsur were responsible for launching KNA’s operations (Kanev & Shiryayev, 2014). As the Agency’s reports published by the hackers revealed, KNA’s main task was simulating “the people’s protest movement against the Maidan” on Ukrainian social media, since exactly in November 2013 popular protests, which were later called the Euromaidan, erupted in Ukraine in response to halting the process of preparation for signing the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement. As to KNA’s operations, Kharkiv journalists, experts, and civil society activists interviewed by the author stated that there was no physical office of this news agency in Kharkiv. At the same time, according to the journalistic investigation of the special project Hroshi on the TV channel 1+1, during V. Yanukovych’s tenure, the office organising the work of anonymous commentators, who executed orders from Russia, was already operating in Kharkiv (1+1 TV channel, 2018), which could be related to Prigozhin’s organisations. The journalists of the Russian publication Delovoy Peterburg took an interest in the activities of the Internet news sites disguised as Ukrainian. With the help of the whois-service, they determined that KNA’s domain belonged to Nevsky News LLC based at the same address as the Agency (Butsenko, 2014).

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Among the most noteworthy facts, which characterise KNA’s activities, is holding the event Prospects for the Economic Development of Ukraine in the Context of the Integration Processes in Kyiv on 16 and 17 December 2013. According to Novaya Gazeta, the report commissioned by the Agency and written by one D. Polonskyi in keeping with the spirit of O. Dugin’s Eurasian ideas was to be a keynote speech. The report was about integrating Ukraine into Russia: supporting the Russian lobby in Ukraine, intensifying propaganda efforts, and expanding joint economic projects. Subsequently, the same D. Polonskyi took an active part in the annexation events and was a member of the self-proclaimed puppet Crimean government of S. Aksyonov.

 

 

4. Russia’s Activity The Channels of Information Influence (October–December 2013) In the autumn of 2013, KNA opened a branch in Simferopol and hired subcontractors. The office was on Dekabrystiv Street, and according to the materials of the Ukrainian project Slidstvo.Info (Hnap, 2015), Yu. Sergachova from Crimea became its director, and the journalist S. Melnik was an editor. The aforementioned O. Pitsur, the manager of the St. Petersburg-based company ArtMedia Group, which cooperated closely with the Agency and was actively involved in launching the operations of KNA’s branch in the AR of Crimea, also engaged in the work. Thirteen people were employed; video, photographic, and other equipment was purchased; the negotiations on creating the organisation United People’s Front of Ukraine were being conducted; cooperation with odious pro-Russian activists was being established. For the sake of fairness, it is worth noting that journalists and media experts working in Crimea back then, who were interviewed by the author, did not have any information on the activities of the mentioned branch. Therefore, it can be assumed that the opening of KNA’s branch in Simferopol was either kept highly secret or largely fictitious.

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According to Novaya Gazeta, KNA’s branch in Simferopol developed “a project to organise activities aimed at increasing the RF’s influence on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, southeastern Ukraine (Novorossiya), and Ukraine in general” (Kanev & Shiryayev, 2014). The aim of the project was “at a minimum, a victory in the local council elections on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and in southeastern Ukraine (Novorossiya), active participation and considerable influence over the situation in a struggle for the presidency, the formation of a large parliamentary party in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and the appointment of its supporters to key posts in the central and local governments.” Thus, it is no coincidence that the idea of “Novorossiya” emerged in the subsequent events. The Vsquare (2017) international investigative reporting project, which unites the Visegrad Group countries, specifies that KNA’s branch in Simferopol hired more than ten local subcontractors. It is not clear which exactly subcontractors were meant, but it can be assumed that they might have been SMM specialists (Social Media Marketing), who specialised in working with social media, and regular users, who were engaged as commentators and fake accounts operators on social media (bots). Commenting on KNA’s activities, Vsquare’s investigators do not exclude that the news

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agency might have contributed to the annexation of the AR of Crimea. The sociological research conducted by O. Zeveleva (2019)—then a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge—in Crimea in 2016-2017, which covered mostly journalists, suggests that local staff was involved in working with social media. Analysing the research findings, the author states that from the very beginning of the annexation operation, “local residents actively assisted Russian intelligence agencies,” particularly in transferring registries data on social transfers to ensure quick incorporation of the population into the Russian system. For example, one of the active participants in the so-called “Crimean spring” said in an interview that he was part of the “Internet resistance” and “was engaged in other activities, about which it was too early to talk then.” Thus, based on the information available, we can state that in October-December 2013, the RF implemented a series of measures aimed at creating a technological system for the manipulation of public opinion on social media in Ukraine, paying special attention to the territory of the AR of Crimea. In fact, civilian organisations such as Prygozhin’s Agency were delegated military functions in the field of special information operations.

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KNA became an instrument for exercising foreign influence, under the legal cover of which overt and covert activity was conducted in 2013-2014. The visible part of the effort included the maintenance of the website, which was disguised as a Ukrainian news site, whereas its editorial team was based in one of the Agency’s divisions in Saint Petersburg. The covert part included organising the work of anonymous commentators (bots) in Kharkiv, Simferopol, and perhaps in other cities; the Ukrainian segment of the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, VKontakte, and Odnoklassniki was intensively manipulated by Russian agents and channels of influence. Groups, pages, and fake accounts were created, which “socialised” and joined target online communities. As a result of KNA’s activity, the pro-Russian information agenda was being promoted; the domestic political situation in Ukraine was being destabilised; regional differences were being artificially emphasised; the idea of Ukrainian statehood was being discredited. Prigozhin’s “vanguard” was preparing the situation for the arrival of “little green men.” Unfortunately, as of 2021, KNA (https://nahnews.org) is still operating, actively covering events in Ukraine. It appears from the familiar rhetoric of modern Russian agitprop that masterminds and owners probably have

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not changed. The publication positions itself as a platform for “journalists from the Ukrainian and other mass media opposed to the Kyiv authorities.” 4.1. Internet Forums Unfortunately, as of today, a mass of evidence about preparing and conducting a special information operation on the Internet to support the annexation of the AR of Crimea by the RF has been deleted or wiped out. Traces of the crime have been carefully hidden, which makes reconstructing the full scale of the events and their chronological sequence difficult. At the same time, even separate pieces of the existing evidence make it possible to form a view of the general approaches and the techniques of their implementation. It can be assumed that one of the most important segments, which received special attention of Russian intelligence agencies, was commenting and discussing topics on social media sites and Internet forums. Usually, it is easier to see what is on the surface than what is hidden in the labyrinth of threads. Moreover, a topic for discussion could be originally completely unrelated to political issues, but it eventually became political and led up to desired conclusions due to deliberate content moderation. Even before the widespread adoption of social media and the growth in their popularity, various Internet

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forums were among the most popular platforms for political discussions. Back in 2004-2010, Crimean topics for discussion with strong anti-Ukrainian overtones began to emerge: “Does Ukraine need Crimea?”, “Will Crimea join Russia?” (Forumkiev.com), “There can be no Ukrainian state” (Durdom), “Whose is Crimea, ours or theirs?” (Forum Mozilla Russia), “Ukraine is close to losing Crimea!” (Politforums.net) (see Figures 7-11).

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The Screenshot of the Web Page of the Forum Mozilla Russia Website, Where the Topic “Whose Is Crimea, Ours or Theirs?” Is Being Discussed (2006)

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The Screenshot of the Web Page of the Forum Leontyev: There Can Be No Ukrainian State (2008)

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Figure 8

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Figure 9

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The Screenshot of the Web Page of the Kyiv Forum for Civilised Conversation Website, Where the Topic “Will Crimea Join Russia?” Is Being Discussed (2009)

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Figure 10 The Screenshot of the Web Page of the Politforums.net Website, Where the Topic “Ukraine Is Close to Losing Crimea!” Is Being Discussed (2010)

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Figure 11 The Screenshot of the Web Page of the Telenet Website, Where the Survey “Is Crimea Ukrainian?” Is Being Conducted (2011)

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On the VKontakte social media site, which, as noted above, was the most popular one in the AR of Crimea, the group Crimea Is the Territory of Russia! has been active since 2013. Also since that time, the topic of seceding from Ukraine has been constantly present in the community Sevastopol Is the Capital of the World. Of course, discussion of such anti-Ukrainian topics on Internet forums can be considered a chance phenomenon rather than a systemic one, explained by the “phantom pain” caused by the collapse of the USSR and the difficulty of social and economic adaptation to the market economy. However, their frequent occurrence, considerable publicity, and the timely raising of sensitive issues lead one to suspect a coordinated and targeted effort. Considering the above, there is a pressing need for comprehensive monitoring of social media (social networking sites, Internet news sites, blogs, thematic and regional forums, topic-specific portals, video hosting services, and other Internet resources) retrospectively, specifically, in the period preceding the annexation of the AR of Crimea. Such monitoring will make it possible to reveal the existence or absence of a centralised command centre (centres), the existence of internal connections, to detect signs that orchestrated information campaigns were being waged, and to define their general emotional and psychological tone. Collected and syn-

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thesised data will make it possible to examine the subject of the information component of the RF’s operation to annex the AR of Crimea, relying on a wider range of material. All of this requires using special search engines, modern monitoring software, and linguistic technologies. We hope that such research will be conducted in the future. 4.2. The GRU and Facebook The aforementioned Agency and other Ye. Prigozhin’s organisations were not the only ones to engage in anti-Ukrainian activity. In the active phase of the military invasion, information traces of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the RF, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), were discovered. In December 2017, the influential American publication The Washington Post published an article by Ellen Nakashima on “a covert influence operation” launched by the GRU, in which the journalist cited a classified report by an undisclosed directorate, which had been obtained by the editorial staff. The article said that the Russian leadership denounced the establishment of a new government in Ukraine after President V. Yanukovych had fled the country as a coup and launched an all-out propaganda offensive. With the aim of discrediting the new Ukrainian government, the confrontation between

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pro-Russian citizens of Ukraine and the Euromaidan activists was being provoked, and the former were threatened with violence on the part of the latter, “Nazis” and “fascists.” For this purpose, since the day when V. Yanukovych was ousted from power, a host of fake accounts had been created on the social media platforms Facebook and VKontakte, from which the desired information had been disseminated. In terms of information influence, those activities were meant to pave the way for launching the operation to annex the AR of Crimea. For example, since the day of the seizure of the buildings of the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Council of the AR of Crimea by anonymous people (27 February 2014), the GRU had “created four groups on Facebook and VKontakte to encourage the Crimeans to support ‘secession from Ukraine.’” Overall, as noted in the article, the GRU targeted more than 30 Ukrainian groups on social media platforms and used paid advertisements on Facebook to increase their popularity. As a result, the groups received nearly 200,000 views on Facebook on 27 February 2014 alone. Moreover, the GRU used other social media platforms to disseminate messages, namely, LiveJournal. E. Nakashima’s article became the first publication that gave specific facts about the information activities of the RF’s military agencies.

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At the same time, it can be assumed that when it comes to a number of groups/pages created on the social media platforms Facebook and VKontakte by the GRU, it is most likely that the groups created and moderated by contractors like the Agency were meant. Otherwise, it is unclear why the GRU would have created the four groups on Facebook and VKontakte since the day of the seizure of the administrative buildings in the AR of Crimea. From a technical point of view, such work is of no value because creating content, popularising and promoting any group on a social media platform takes a considerable amount of time. All the more so as trained agents of “Internet influence” had been operating there, and groups/pages targeted specifically at the Crimean audience had been created. Perhaps such “original” groups created by the GRU were meant to be a launching pad for spreading selected information, which, after being “legalised,” was echoed and disseminated, or it was little more than typical window dressing in the manner of an army, a “tick-box exercise.” 4.3. The Twitter of “Crimean Events” In the active phase of the operation to annex the AR of Crimea, a full range of Internet tools were used by the Russian side, including Twitter, a microblogging service, which is not very popular in Ukraine and Russia.

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Figure 12 The Screenshot of the Twitter Account @vezhlivo Polite People

  The role that the Twitter account @vezhlivo Polite people has played in the information confrontation is described in the report by the Israeli Digital Agency Israel NetherOcean. Published on 14 April 2015, the text of the report was widely cited in Ukraine and Russia, which raised a whole range of questions about the content, the customers who ordered the report, and the agency itself.

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Figure 13 The Excerpt From the Report Armies Online by the Israeli Digital Agency Israel NetherOcean on the Role of the Twitter Account @vezhlivo Polite People in the “Crimean events” (2015)

  The report Armies Online by the Israeli Digital Agency Israel NetherOcean (2015) looks at creating a positive image for the Israel Defence Forces and the Russian army with the help of social media and the mass media. The text of the report is clearly complimentary about the effectiveness of the information-psychological operation in the “Crimean hybrid war” and contains overtly anti-Ukrainian passages. For example, describing the

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political situation in Ukraine after President V. Yanukovych had fled the country, it was mentioned that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was responsible for mass killings of Jews and Poles, and that the oligarch I. Kolomoysky was involved in the death of pro-Russian activists in Odesa on 2 May 2014. The Israeli online publication Vesti has conducted its own investigation and called into question the existence of the agency, which is not legally registered in Israel, does not have Facebook or Twitter pages, and whose website only republishes other websites’ content. As noted in the article, “this is a falsification, the purpose of which is not quite clear” (Glavnoe, 2015). At the same time, despite the obscure origin of the Armies Online report, this source appears quite interesting, and the facts stated in it can become an object of analysis. Notably, a considerable amount of information on various techniques for using social media by the Israel Defence Forces has been gathered and analysed in the report, which can be of interest to researchers. It can be assumed that the main addressee and the major customer who ordered this report are based not in Israel but in Russia: with the help of the “reputable” think tank, the “superiors’” attention was drawn to the successful implementation of the information project Polite People in the Twitter segment. The report by the Digital Agency Israel NetherOcean might have been ordered by some of the agents involved in conducting the

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RF’s information operation against Ukraine in the AR of Crimea, who decided that their effort was underestimated and, therefore, sought greater publicity. Thus, the data provided in the report undoubtedly require verification, but at the same time, they offer further evidence of Russian intelligence agencies’ active involvement in social media. According to the mentioned report, 1.7 million tweets in support of the Twitter account @vezhlivo Polite people have been posted by 125 accounts from Russia, the southeastern regions of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The tweets were posted in the period between 28 February and 1 April 2014. Note that the activity reached a peak on 16 March 2014, the date when the so-called referendum on the status of the AR of Crimea was held. The authors of the report state that these figures are a record for support for the activity of the Russian troops and that the channel has played an important role in countering the dissemination of information about the events from a pro-Ukrainian perspective. As of today, it is difficult to verify the accuracy of the provided data; however, it is also unreasonable to ignore them. In the case of promoting the hashtag Polite people, one can state that it has achieved local success, especially in terms of the message multiplication effect and voluntary content creation by ordinary users.

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The research by Alexander Lawrence (2015b) for the online publication Global Voices also suggests Russia’s involvement in false Twitter activity. Using NodeXL open source tools, the Internet researcher has collected and analysed 20.5 thousand pro-Kremlin accounts on Twitter. As a result of the analysis, it has been established that large-scale attempts to manipulate information through the regulation of bot behaviour in the Twittersphere coincided with the beginning of the protests in Ukraine (the autumn and winter of 2013) and the armed aggression in eastern Ukraine (the early spring of 2014). The mentioned publication faced a barrage of criticism from the Russian mass media and social media. 4.4. The Blocking of Facebook It should also be noted that Russian intelligence agencies applied other techniques of “cyber warfare.” Apart from disseminating selected information on social media, the Russian special operation plan also implied mass blocking of Ukrainian activists on Facebook (Yanevskiy, 2017). As the MSNBC (2017) channel reported, Russian agents of the information war employed a surprisingly effective technique for removing Ukrainian voices from Facebook and fighting off competition from them in the information space during the invasion of the neighbouring state. The former U.S. Department of State Deputy Assistant Secretary for Digital Strategy Moira

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Whelan (2017) confirmed the accuracy of this information stating that the U.S. Department of State tried to help their colleagues in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, but Facebook “was simply unresponsive.” The blocking technique consisted in identifying opinion leaders who defended Ukrainian positions and filing hundreds of complaints about their Facebook accounts from bots (fake accounts) controlled by Russian intelligence agencies. The Facebook administration blocked vast numbers of accounts without delving into the nuances of the situation and ignoring the warnings about contributing directly to Russia’s special operation against the sovereign state. The blocking peak coincided with the period of protests in Ukraine (November 2013– February 2014) and the annexation of the AR of Crimea. .

4.5. The Nationwide Anti-Ukrainian Campaign in Russia: The Crimean Dimension Looking at the activity of the Crimean segment of social media, one should remember that all the events of the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 unfolded against the backdrop of the nationwide anti-Ukrainian campaign in Russia waged by the Kremlin. While on the territory of Ukraine Russian intelligence agencies were only beginning to create the resources required for manipulating public opinion on the Internet, in Russia, a

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powerful and mobilised information structure had already been in place. A significant part of the Crimean population was deeply integrated into the Russian information space and thus was under the enormous influence of anti-Ukrainian propaganda. Even before the beginning of the annexation of the AR of Crimea, users of the most popular Russian social media sites were actively involved in discussions about the political events in Ukraine related to the protests in Kyiv’s central square, the Maidan. It is noteworthy that prior to those events, users of Russian social media were quite apolitical and did not express their political views, and, overall, political content was not in great demand among the users. As the protest movement in Ukraine was becoming more organised, numerous groups/pages such as the Anti-Maidan, the Anti-Maidan Southeast, the Anti-Maidan, and There Are Millions of Us, the Army of Novorossiya—Status Reports were emerging on the Russian social media sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. Therefore, it can be assumed that organisations like the Agency, which were used to counter Russian protest movements, engaged in such “anti-Maidan” activity and stimulated it artificially.

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Figure 14 The List of Anti-Ukrainian Communities on the VKontakte Social Media Site

  The content of such news groups/pages, which specialised in Ukrainian topics, was created either exclusively by their administrators or by each member who got an opportunity to post their own message to the news feed, obviously, after it had been moderated and checked rigorously for compliance with the subject and the ideology. According to the analytical publication The Conversation, in January 2014, the largest anti-Maidan group on

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VKontakte comprised only about 6,000 members. However, by mid-March, after President V. Yanukovych had fled the country, the number of its members had risen dramatically to a quarter of a million followers (Kozachenko, 2014). The news feed of anti-Maidan groups/pages was constantly updated and had a pronounced negative tone focusing on the themes of poverty, corruption, the threat of a civil war, economic collapse, the collapse of the national currency and, as a result, the collapse of the state. The theme of alleged anti-Russian sentiments was prominent, which was especially sensitive for the AR of Crimea where the ethnic Russians constituted the majority of the population. As a rule, such groups/pages focused on providing updates on current events with negative comments about the actions of the new Ukrainian government and the prospects for Ukraine, discrediting supporters of the Euromaidan, and inflating false threats to the Russian-speaking population. It was in that period that criticism of the “coup d’état in Ukraine” made such expressions and characteristics as “the Banderites,” “the junta,” “bloody chaos,” “Nazis,” “the overthrow of the legitimate authorities by the pro-American junta,” “resurgence of fascism,” and “the persecution and oppression of the Russian-speaking population” commonplace.

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Since the end of 2013, Russian social media sites, particularly Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, have also been filled with satirical content. The most shared were so-called demotivators, images consisting of a picture and a slogan as a caption. In such pictures, the supporters of the Euromaidan were caricatured as grotesque and naive people “galloping to Europe.” Insults to the peculiarities of the Ukrainian language, national symbols, clothes, customs, history, and culture, which aimed to instil a contemptuous attitude towards the Ukrainians and the events in Ukraine, became common. The opportunity to participate in discussing the posts of “anti-Maidan” groups/pages gave their members a sense of belonging to political events and made such groups/pages more and more popular on social media sites. In her research, Natalia Knoblock (2016), an associate professor at Saginaw Valley State University, emphasises the peculiarities of using satire and sarcasm on social media as a political weapon during the political crisis of 2014 in Ukraine. The author has analysed the examples of online conversations and original messages about the events of 2014 in Ukraine, mostly on the Odnoklassniki social media site, and has come to the somewhat unexpected but reasonable conclusion that sarcastic insults to the opponents are not aimed at influencing their behaviour but rather at the improved status within

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the online community of similar ideological views. Sarcasm and satire hurled at the opponents allow the posts’ authors to create social bonds and “bring together the people who share their own beliefs and values.” As a result, under the influence of negative information intervention, millions of users of the most popular Russian social media, including Crimeans, have developed a strongly negative attitude to the protests of the end of 2013 in Ukraine. Since December 2013, the number of disturbing messages about the “catastrophic” prospects and consequences of the Crimean peninsula remaining part of Ukraine had been increasing in anti-Maidan groups and on anti-Maidan pages. The change of government in Kyiv was commented on in the manner of SOS news about the dreadful fate awaiting “the native Russian population after the Banderites have come to power,” including forced Ukrainisation and even establishing concentration camps for the Russians. Almost all such groups/pages informed about the USA’s plans to establish NATO military bases on the peninsula. Links to different sources claiming that contracts for building the infrastructure required for such bases were put out to tender in the USA were cited as evidence. The negative scenarios were supported by opinions of experts in the fields of geopolitics, political science, history, and sociology.

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Figure 15 Screenshot of the Crimean Thematic VKontakte Group "Crimea Is the 8th Wonder of the World!" Containing a Call for a Referendum on Secession from Ukraine (2014)

  Therefore, new Crimea-specific groups/pages soon appeared on the VKontakte and Odnoklassniki social media sites such as the Crimean Spring, Crimea Is Russia, Novorossiya, Crimea—Status Reports, which began to gain millions of followers. The topics of “Crimean” and “anti-Maidan” groups/pages became virtually identical as the same messages with minor differences appeared

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in news feeds almost simultaneously. As early as the beginning of 2014, public calls for a referendum on secession from Ukraine were spread in the largest Crimean thematic VKontakte group Crimea Is the 8th Wonder of the World! The nationwide anti-Ukrainian campaign in Russia was carefully synchronised with the regional one in Crimea thematically and chronologically. Thus, when the information hysteria surrounding the events in Kyiv reached its peak in Crimea, the need for and the expectation of Russia’s intervention became a burning issue. Public opinion of the majority of the peninsula’s residents who used social media had been prepared to justify the need for the AR of Crimea’s “accession” to Russia. The research by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (2015) makes an important observation in this regard, specifically, that the audience analysis was critical to Russia’s operational success. Russia has carefully analysed its target audience, managed to predict its likely behaviour, and used the right channels to encourage it. The events in the AR of Crimea have demonstrated that even a small number of people receiving massive military and information support can pose a significant threat to national security.

 

5. The Ukrainian Response Countermeasures Against Foreign Information Influence Against the backdrop of special information activities undertaken by the RF as a component of the operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014, it is fair to refer to countermeasures taken by the Ukrainian side. Unfortunately, Ukraine, which was not ready for a conventional war, was even less prepared for new-type warfare with its information component and modern ICT. The Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), V. Nalyvaichenko, was absolutely frank when in March 2014, while commenting on Russia’s attack on Ukrainian telecommunications systems during the annexation events, he acknowledged that “none of the state information security systems was prepared for such a blatant violation of the law” (SecurityLab.ru, 2014). As a result, the new Ukrainian government found itself in a stalemate: on the one hand, the treason on the part of the country’s top leadership headed by the President, on the other hand, the lack of required laws and regulations, structures, resources, experience, and experts in information warfare. Under such conditions, activists and volunteers took on the main burden of the Ukrainian-Russian information confrontation. However, it should be emphasised that for decades, the expert community has informed senior government 99

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officials about the dangers of a large-scale Russian information presence in the AR of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. For example, shortly before the “Crimean events,” in September 2013, the Director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, Doctor of Political Sciences O. Lytvynenko, warned that Ukraine would not be able to prove its separateness from Russia without violent military confrontation, as evidenced by the experience of Poland, Finland, and the Baltic countries (Texty.org.ua, 2014). Certain state bodies have publicly warned the country’s top political leadership that further delay in responding to Russia’s “information expansion” is unacceptable. For example, as early as 2008, Decision No. 6/19 of the Board of the State Committee for Television and Radio-Broadcasting of Ukraine On the State of the Information Space of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea of 29.05.2008 noted that the state of the information space of the AR of Crimea caused concern: “the territory of the peninsula is under the powerful information influence of the neighbouring countries. On the territory of the autonomous republic, information-psychological campaigns are being waged, which misinform the public, threaten the territorial integrity of the country, hamper the pursuit of the state policy in the field of European and Euro-Atlantic integration.” The Decree of the President of Ukraine On the Decision of the National Security and Defence Council of

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Ukraine of 21 March 2008 On Urgent Measures to Ensure Information Security of Ukraine, Instruction No. 11/896 of the President of Ukraine of 23 April 2008 On Taking Urgent Measures to Comprehensively Solve the Problems of Information Support for the Population of the AR of Crimea, and the relevant instructions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine all stressed the need for an adequate response to the threatening trends in the information space of the AR of Crimea. Unfortunately, the regulatory documents produced by the state administrative apparatus were mostly declarative and either were not complied with or failed to achieve the desired results. For the sake of fairness, it is worth noting the problems of legal regulation that law enforcement officers, especially the SBU operatives, encountered when trying to document anti-Ukrainian activity on the Internet, particularly on social media. For example, the SBU operatives who worked in the AR of Crimea at that time complained of the difficulties not only with the detection of wrongdoers by using technical means but also with recording evidence and classifying such actions. Consequently, the cooperation with the prosecuting authorities on these issues was hindered, with the result that the investigations were hampered, and investigative activity was not conducted.

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Unfortunately, the proper conclusions were not drawn, as detailed in the analytical report entitled Crimea. War: The Preconditions for Russian Aggression, which was prepared by the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine staff (2016). The report states that by the start of the active phase of the strategic Chekist-military operation of the RF in Crimea, Ukraine’s defence capability was at a critically low level, and its ability to resist armed aggression had been lost. However, it was during the “Crimean events” that Ukraine’s path to gaining practical experience of information resistance to Russia’s influence techniques began. Given the rapidity of the annexation, not much has been done in the Crimean direction, but based on this experience and the experience of the further military action in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Ukrainian authorities have made the first strategic decisions in the information area (National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, 2014). As noted above, Ukrainian activists were the first to counter the Russian information machine. The civil sector started taking various non-systemic but necessary measures. First of all, it was crucial to clarify the Ukrainian position on the events in the AR of Crimea and counter the flow of disinformation spread by Russia. Amid confusion and disorientation prevailing in the assessments of the Crimean situation both in Ukraine and

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abroad, it was especially important to provide a continuous flow of information. It was necessary to spread truthful information to foreign audiences, on whose position the global recognition or non-recognition of “Crimean independence,” the process of “voluntary reunification” with Russia, and the overall legitimacy of the RF’s actions depended. The non-governmental organisation Maidan of Foreign Affairs founded during the protests of 2013-2014 by the famous Ukrainian diplomat B. Yaremenko has made a significant contribution to the process of establishing communication with members of the diplomatic corps and international organisations. It was the Maidan of Foreign Affairs’ team of acknowledged experts on the Black Sea region (A. Klymenko, T. Guchakova, and Yu. Smelianskyi) that became one of the main sources of relevant, verified, and up-to-date information on the course of Russia’s invasion of the AR of Crimea. The online publication BlackSeaNews specialising in Crimean and Black Sea issues, led by the editor-in-chief A. Klymenko, has played the role of a reputable expert platform. BlackSeaNews published exclusive information on Russia’s military and economic presence in the Black Sea, unique statistics, and analytical reports.

104 FALSE MIRRORS Figure 16 The Screenshot of the BlackSeaNews Home Page

  Another information project, CrimeaSOS, was initially created by volunteers as a Facebook page and later evolved into a multifunctional website. From the first days of the Russian invasion, the group of volunteers has been collecting and publishing up-to-date and verified information about the situation in the AR of Crimea. In February 2014, a Facebook page appeared encouraging Ukrainian Internet activists to join the Cyberhundred [Kibersotnia]. This group is considered to be involved in the organisation of a number of cyberattacks. For example, in March 2014, the site of the official newspaper of the Russian government Rossiyskaya Gazeta was hacked into, and the Cyber-hundred’s logo and a selection of anti-Putin photographs were published there. In addition, on the website of the Kremlin’s main propaganda mouthpiece abroad, the TV channel Russia Today, the word “Nazi” was added to the headlines of all

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English-language materials. It is believed that it was the reaction of the anonymous Internet activists to the decision of the Federation Council of the RF to grant permission for the use of the RF’s Armed Forces on the territory of Ukraine, in the AR of Crimea, because of the so-called “threat to the lives of Russians.” Moreover, in March 2014, unidentified people carried out a DDoS attack blocking the work of the websites (referendum2014.org.ua) dedicated to holding “a referendum on the status of the AR of Crimea” (dp.ru, 2014). Figure 17 The Screenshot of the Web Page of the NGO CrimeaSOS Website

  Numerous facts about the Russian aggression in the AR of Crimea have been published by the volunteer project of the international community InformNapalm created in March 2014; and at the initiative of the programmer from Kyiv Ye. Dokukin, the SBU has blocked the five Crimean government sites, sta-crimea.gov.ua, minek-crimea.gov.ua, sev.gov.ua, crimea.gov.ua, and ark.gov.ua, used

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by the illegitimate authorities in the AR of Crimea (Vorona, 2014). Overall, in assessments of Ukraine’s counter-propaganda efforts, one can agree with the conclusions of scholars at the National Institute for Strategic Studies (2014) who note the active participation of the civil society against the backdrop of the obvious lack of media response on the part of the government. According to the experts, this situation is explained by the absence of a comprehensive national strategy for conveying information to foreign audiences and resistance as well as the lack of necessary means and suitably qualified people in Ukraine. In the end, it should be acknowledged that tactically Ukraine has lost the territory, but strategically it has won the “battle for the brains,” finally cutting the Russian-Soviet umbilical cord that linked the two countries. The Atlantic Council researcher and former U.S. Department of State Coordinator for Sanctions Policy Daniel Fried, speaking at a hearing in the United States Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs on the lessons from Russian disinformation in Europe, cited Ukraine as an example of the epic failure of Russian disinformation (Bedratenko, 2019).

 

Conclusions In 2013-2014, at the behest of Russia’s political leadership, the implementation of a series of measures to create organisations for the manipulation of public opinion in the Ukrainian segment of the Internet and on the social media platforms Facebook, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, LiveJournal, and the microblogging service Twitter began. Initially, the RF’s interest in Ukrainian websites was situational and conditioned by the Euromaidan events; the theme of the AR of Crimea was a secondary consideration. In terms of resources, in 2013, the RF was not prepared for waging influence operations in the “ua” Internet zone. At that time, in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook and VKontakte, anti-Kremlin sentiments and opposition to V. Yanukovych’s government were widespread. According to the content analysis of the largest Ukrainian public communities on Facebook and VKontakte, conducted by the author from November 2013 to January 2014 to reveal the level of loyalty to the government, among 1,854 communities, 152 (8.2%) were loyal to the government, 570 (30.8%)—neutral, 842 (45.4%)— disloyal, and 290 (15.6%)—did not discuss political issues. The RF’s operation to annex the AR of Crimea was not planned but became a spontaneous reaction to the 107

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“window of opportunity” provided by the Euromaidan. Prior to the beginning of the annexation in February 2014, Russia had not had time to deploy a fully-fledged system for moderating social media content aimed at the Crimean audience. It was the nationwide anti-Ukrainian campaign in Russia that played a crucial role in shaping public opinion of Crimean users of social media sites, particularly “anti-Maidan” and Crimean separatist groups/pages created in Russia. The Russian authorities have masked their activities related to social media content moderation as much as possible, delegating part of special military functions to a civilian contractor. One of the contractors fulfilling the “Ukrainian” order was the Agency of the businessman Ye. Prigozhin, which had acquired the necessary skills while suppressing the Russian protest movement in 2011-2013. Experts talk about the involvement of other similar companies, both Russian and Ukrainian ones. The Agency created the fictitious Ukrainian media outlet Kharkov News Agency (KNA), whose editorial team was located in Russia; branches, from which the moderation of social media content was planned/conducted, were opened in Kharkiv, Simferopol, and possibly Kyiv. Not earlier than November 2013, the organisation of Russian “web brigades’” work in the Crimean direction began, as evidenced by the opening of KNA’s branch in Simferopol, but given the shortage of time, a high level of their performance seems doubtful.

CONCLUSIONS 109

In addition to civilian contractors, the GRU is known to be involved in working with social media, although it is logical to assume that similar tasks were also performed by the Federal Security Service of the RF (the Intelligence Information and International Relations Service or the Centre for Information Security) and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the RF. The objective of the RF’s information operation on social media was to prepare public opinion of Crimean residents and create the most favourable conditions for the annexation operation. For this purpose: 1. the new government in Ukraine was being discredited; 2. the tensions of the confrontation were heightened by intimidation and inflating the non-existent nationalist threat from “fascists”/“the Banderites”; 3. old Soviet phobias and stereotypes about NATO and a mythical American intervention were being exploited; 4. the idea of secession from Ukraine and the union with “brotherly Russia” was being propagated; 5. the idea that there were no alternatives to Russia, in the person of President V. Putin, as the sole guarantor of stability, peace, and security on the peninsula, was planted; 6. the idea about complete self-sufficiency of the autonomous republic and its ability to “happily” exist independently was being promoted.

The channels of communication were Facebook, VKontakte, LiveJournal, and the Twitter microblogging

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service, and the instruments of influence were groups/ pages, fake accounts (bots), and bloggers. To this end, groups/pages were joined, and desired messages were distributed and engaged with (likes, posts, shares, and comments). One of the important effects of the RF’s information operation on social media was the viral spread of information, the creation of additional content, and the involvement of voluntary assistants, which significantly accelerated the campaign and increased the scale of information influence exerted over the residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. The analysis of the target audience by Russian intelligence agencies and understanding of its expectations and probable behaviour were crucial for the operation’s success. Years of Crimean residents’ exposure to Russian propaganda amid total inaction of the Ukrainian authorities have paved the way for the Russian influence operation. Proposals Based on the analysis of the use of modern information and communication technologies by the RF, as exemplified by the operation to annex the AR of Crimea, and taking into account the experience of information support for the armed aggression in the Donbas, a number of legal, technical, and administrative proposals can be

CONCLUSIONS 111

made that will make it possible to refine Ukraine’s strategy and tactics for countering Russian information warfare. 1. Conducting global monitoring using modern automated systems for collecting, processing, and analysing information. The Kremlin’s actions in the foreign policy arena are always preceded by information preparation. The report by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (2015) emphasises that early detection and analysis of the elements within the Russian narrative signalling potential aggressive behaviour is critical. 2. Conducting a daily nationwide telephone survey on topical social and political issues to monitor changes in public opinion and determine the effectiveness of Russian propaganda. Note that Kyiv International Institute of Sociology has created the “Index of Russian propaganda effectiveness” (RPE), which has been measured by conducting sociological research since February 2015. 3. Constructing a detailed sociological profile of the current and potential target audiences of Russian propaganda and continuous monitoring of changes over time. 4. The creation of the Information Analysis and Response Centre (following the example of the USA), which will provide the mass media with the information

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on detected fake news (fakes), expert analysis and comments, statistics and factual data on anti-Ukrainian activity on the Internet, in particular on social media, and unmask information attacks, their sources, and people involved. 5. The creation of a website to counter Russian disinformation and fakes following the model of the EU task force on strategic communications East StratCom Task Force. 6. The development of a system for searching, processing, and analysing research materials, publications, and other materials of foreign origin on the theory and practice of information warfare and application of modern ICT. 7. The detection and exposure of groups/pages, social media accounts, video channels, and sites that engage in activity aimed at undermining Ukraine’s national security and defence, the publication of the detected data, and taking action to close/block such sources. This measure is proposed as an asymmetric response to the activities of the Russian “bot army.” 8. The creation of a Ukrainian equivalent to the inoSMI online publication, which will publish articles from the reputable international mass media translated into Ukrainian and Russian. According to scholars at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, this will help to counter disinformation more effectively.

CONCLUSIONS 113

9. The establishment of ongoing contacts and the exchange of information among international organisations specialising in countering Russian disinformation campaigns, such as the EU task force on strategic communications East StratCom Task Force, the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell operating within the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre, the European External Action Service, the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security, and the Network and Information Security Platform (the NIS Platform). 10. The development of a single response and cooperation protocol for government agencies in the event of an external information attack, taking into account the provisions of EU laws and regulations. 11. The adaptation of Ukrainian society to the implementation of the European information security system. This range of issues is examined by scholars at V.M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in the monograph The Legal Dimension of the National Information Policy of Ukraine in the Context of Global Challenges under the general editorship of Professor I. Kresina (2018), Doctor of Political Sciences. Final Remarks The research into the use of social media by the military-political leadership of the RF in the operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014 often resembles hunting

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for a ghost that leaves no trace. When it comes to accumulating evidence of the Russian military presence, there are completely material things: equipment, documents, people, traces of crimes, whereas virtual reality lives by other rules. Historical research in the field of the Internet is somewhat of terra incognita, where surprises and pitfalls await scholars at every turn. The most common situation the author encountered in the course of the research was the message “404” or “Not Found” when a requested page or resource was not found. Even at the time of writing this book, some of the previously available materials disappeared from the Internet. Therefore, one of the first findings of the study is the problem of the destruction of sources: the process of gradual deliberate or technologically conditioned disappearance of materials, which, in turn, necessitates the development of methodologies and the involvement of the techniques for monitoring and recording the required information. This issue is also of practical importance in the field of national security and defence: it is necessary to legally define the cases of using social media to commit information aggression and appropriate monitoring systems for documenting such cases. As to perhaps the most popular question of whether the operation to annex the AR of Crimea was improvised or planned, the results of the study suggest that the improvised response was clearly observed in the

CONCLUSIONS 115

segment of social media. Given the fact that Russian influence on the Ukrainian information space has always been significant, the rapid activation of a particular media segment is indicative of unplanned activity. Overall, one can say that there had been strategic intentions, and tactical opportunities were provided by the Euromaidan events. Against the backdrop of the weakened state power as a result of the 2013-2014 protests, the leadership of the RF had the chance to implement their expansionist scenario. Analysing the techniques and methods of the RF’s use of social media platforms for conducting information operations, there are grounds for arguing that the “Ukrainian experience” can be adapted to other countries. For example, in order to destabilise the domestic political situation in Ukraine, the Russian side addressed the most divisive issues in its messaging. A similar tactic was used during the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. According to the investigation by the Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller (2018), the Russians deliberately sowed discord by raising the most divisive economic and political issues, such as immigration, the spread of Islam, the rights of Blacks, abuse of power by the police, through social media accounts designed to appear as if U.S. persons controlled them. The creation of KNA deserves special attention because, considering the events that took place, it could

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have potentially been viewed as something akin to an information and organisational hub for the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine. The opening of the agency in Kharkiv meant that in the long run, this city, according to the Russian scenario, was to become the centre of the separatist entity, since Kharkiv, not Luhansk or Donetsk, is the point of attraction for Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and other southeastern regions. Thus, the performed analysis of Russia’s use of social media platforms for providing information support for the operation to annex the AR of Crimea in 2014 is only the first step in constructing a comprehensive picture of the events. Further research will provide a deeper understanding of the strategy and tactics for the implementation of the RF’s information security doctrines and will help to devise appropriate regulatory and legal, military-technical, and administrative countermeasures. During the RF’s operation to annex the AR of Crimea, a mechanism for working with social media platforms was established, which had been tested while suppressing the Russian opposition movements. The synergy effect was produced by combining such measures with the Russian massive propaganda campaign in the fields of television and radio broadcasting. In this case, social media have played the role of a “false mirror” for the Crimeans, a distorted source of information, which, in contrast to official sources, was

CONCLUSIONS 117

trusted and used to verify information from other sources. Social media have played the role of a “false mirror” for the Crimeans: a trusted adviser that was used to verify information from other sources, but who has proved to be a liar, which has produced the effect of double manipulation, from television and social media, creating the environment of lies.

 

 

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REFERENCES 131 Panarin, I. N. (2008a). Informatsionnaya voyna za budushchee Rossii [Information war for the future of Russia] (256 p.). Goryachaya liniya—Telekom. Panarin, I. N. (2008b). Sistema informatsionnogo protivoborstva [The system for information confrontation]. Voyenno-promyshlennyy kuryer, 41(257). https://www.vpk-news.ru/articles/3672 Panarin, I. N. (2009, May 27). Sozdanie Yevraziyskogo Soyuza—istoricheskaya neobkhodimost [The creation of the Eurasian Union is a historical necessity]. Igor Panarin. https://panarin.ucoz. com/publ/1-1-0-30 Panarin, I. N. (2010). Pervaya mirovaya informatsionnaya voyna. Razval SSSR [The first world information war. The collapse of the USSR] (253 p.). Piter. Panarin, I. N. (2012). SMI, propaganda i informatsionnyye voyny [The mass media, propaganda, and information wars] (411 p.). Pokoleniye. Panarin, I. N. (2014, March 18). Vossoyedineniye Kryma s Rossiyey: tekhnologiya pobedy [The reunification of Crimea with Russia: The technique for victory] [Post]. VKontakte. https://vk.com /wall-41056521_354 Panarin, I. N. (2017a, December 28). Gibridnaya voyna i 2018 god [Hybrid Warfare and 2018] [Video]. YouTube. https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=1Sr7MqKiAGM&feature=youtu.be Panarin, I. N. (2017b). Gibridnaya voyna: Teoriya i praktika [Hybrid Warfare: Theory and practice] (402 p.). Goryachaya liniya— Telekom. Panarin, I. N. (2018). Russkiy Krym i razval SShA [Russian Crimea and the collapse of the USA] (238 p.). Goryachaya liniya—Telekom. Petryk, V. M., Ostroukhov, V. V., Shtokvysh, O. A. et al. (2006). Informatsiine protyborstvo v istorii liudstva. Suchasni tekhnolohii ta zasoby manipuliuvannia svidomistiu, vedennia informatsiinykh viin i spetsialnykh informatsiinykh operatsii: navchalnyi posibnyk. [Information confrontation in the history of mankind. Modern technologies and means of manipulation of consciousness, waging information wars and conducting special information operations [Textbook]] (pp. 7-20). Rosava.

132 FALSE MIRRORS Pievtsov, H. V., Zalkin, S. V., Sidchenko, S. O., & Khudarkovskyi, K. I. (2015). Informatsiyno-psykholohichni operatsii Rosiiskoi Federatsii v Ukraini: Modeli vplyvu ta napriamy protydii [Information and psychological operations of the Russian Federation in Ukraine: Influence models and countermeasures]. Nauka i oborona, 2, 28-32. Pocheptsov, H. H. (2014). Informatsionnye operatsii i Krym: Bazovye prichiny dlya manipulyatsiy [Information operations and Crimea: basic reasons for manipulation]. Psyfactor. https://psyfa ctor.org/psyops/infowar_krym.htm Pocheptsov, H. H. (2015). Suchasni informatsiini viiny [Modern information wars] (497 p.). The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Pocheptsov, H. H. (2016). Smysly i viiny: Ukraina i Rosiia v informatsiinykh i smyslovykh viinakh [Meanings and wars: Ukraine and Russia in information wars and wars of meanings] (316 p.). The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Pomerantsev, P. (2016). Why we’re post-fact. Granta. https://grant a.com/why-were-post-fact Putin, V. (2014, March 18). Obrashchenie Prezidenta Rossiyskoy Federatsii 18 marta 2014 goda [The address by the President of the Russian Federation on 18 March 2014]. Kremlin. http://kreml in.ru/events/president/news/20603 Rastorguyev, S. P. (1999). Formula informatsionnoy voyny [The formula of information warfare] (222 p.). Radio i svyaz. Rastorguyev, S. P. (2014). Uroki informatsionnoy voyny: Intervyu s Sergeem Rastorguevym [Information war lessons: An interview with Sergei Rastorguyev]. Akademiya informatsionnoy samozashchity. http://www.iwars.su/---c28u Rastorguyev, S. P., & Litvinenko, M. V. (2014). Informatsionnye operatsii v seti Internet [Information operations on the Internet] (132 p.). Tsentr strategicheskikh otsenok i prognozov. Rezunkov, V. (2015, March 14). Oni lyubyat Putina 12 chasov podryad [They love Putin for 12 hours in a row]. Radio Svoboda. https://www.svoboda.org/a/26899521.html Rosiisko-ukrainska informatsiina viina [The Russian-Ukrainian information warfare]. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://uk.wikipedia. org/wiki/Російсько-українська_інформаційна_війна

REFERENCES 133 RT. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT Rudomskyi, R. (2017, 26 October). Kurator okkupirovannogo Donbassa ot FSB. Chto izvestno pro Sergeya Besedu [The supervisor of the occupied Donbas from the FSB. What is known about Sergey Beseda]. Depo.ua. https://www.depo.ua/rus/ war/kh/kurator-okupovanogo-donbasu-vid-fsb-scho-vidom o-pro-sergiya-besidu-20171026664368 Rushchenko, I. P. (2015). Rosiisko-ukrainska hibrydna viina: Pohliad sotsioloha: monohrafiia [Russia-Ukraine hybrid war: Sociological perspective [Monograph] (268 p.). FOP Pavlenko O.H. Russian Military-Historical Society. (2015). Istoriya Kryma [The history of Crimea] (461 p.). OLMA Media Group. Rusyayeva, P., & Zakharov, A. (2017, October 17). Rassledovanie RBK: Kak “fabrika trolley” porabotala na vyborakh v SShA [RBC investigation: How the “troll factory” worked in the U.S. election]. RBC, 11(135). https://www.rbc.ru/magazine/2017 /11/59e0c17d9a79470e05a9e6c1   Saienko, O. H. (2015). Mekhanizm informatsiino-psykholohichnoho vplyvu v umovakh hibrydnoi viiny [The mechanism for information and psychological influence in the conditions of hybrid warfare]. Visnyk Natsionalnoyi Akademiyi Derzhavnoyi Prykordonnoyi Sluzhby Ukrayiny, 1, 11-25. Sasyn, H. V. (2015). Informatsiina viina: Sutnist, zasoby realizatsii, rezultaty ta mozhlyvosti protydii (na prykladi rosiiskoi ekspansii v ukrainskyi prostir) [Information warfare: The essence, means of realisation, outcomes, and the possibility of resistance (as exemplified by the Russian expansion into the Ukrainian space)]. Hrani, 3, 18-23. Savitskiy, I. V. (2017). Rossiyskaya istoriografiya o vkhozhdenii Kryma v sostav Rossiyskoy Federatsii v 2014 godu [Russian historiography on Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation in 2014]. Uchenye Zapiski Petrozavodskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta, 3, 43-50. SecurityLab.ru. (2014, March 4). Glava SBU: Ukraina postradala ot kiberatak [The Head of the SBU: Ukraine has suffered from cyberattacks]. SecurityLab.ru. https://www.securitylab.ru/ news/450202.php

134 FALSE MIRRORS Seddon, M. (2014, June 2). Documents show how Russia’s troll army hit America. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeedne ws.com/article/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-t roll-army-hit-america Shevchenko, O. V. (2018). Informatsiina skladova rosiiskoukrainskoi viiny [The information component of the RussianUkrainian war]. In M. Doroshko, & V. Baliuk (Eds.), Hibrydna viina Rosii proty Ukrainy pislia Revoliutsii Hidnosti [Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine after the Revolution of Dignity] (pp.128-151). Nika-Tsentr. Shirokorad, A. B. (2016). Krym—2014. Kak eto bylo? [Crimea 2014. How was it?] (389 p.). Veche. Shuster, S. (2015, March 5). The global news network RT is the Russian government’s main weapon in an intensifying information war with the West—and its top editor has a direct phone line to the Kremlin. TIME. https://time.com/rt-putin/ Smola, L. Ye. (2016). Informatsiino-psykholohichnyi skladnyk hibrydnoi viiny [The information-psychological component of hybrid warfare]. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona, 9-10, 68-71. Smolii, V., Kulchytskyi, S., & Yakubova, L. (2016). Donbas i Krym v ekonomichnomu, suspilno politychnomu ta etnokulturnomu prostori Ukrainy: Istorychnyi dosvid, moderni vyklyky, perspektyvy. Analitychna dopovid [The Donbas and Crimea in the economic, socio-political, and ethnocultural landscape of Ukraine: The historical experience, modern challenges, the outlook [Analytical report]] (H. Boriak, Ed., 616 p.). The Institute of the History of Ukraine of the NASU. Soshnikov, A. (2015, March 11). Stolitsa politicheskogo trollinga [The capital of political trolling]. MR7ru. https://mr-7.ru/art icles/112478 Spisok stran po voennym raskhodam [List of countries by military expenditures]. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/ wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B A_%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD_%D0%BF% D0%BE_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1 %8B%D0%BC_%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%85%D0%BE %D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BC  Sputnik. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik

REFERENCES 135 Texty.org.ua. (2014, August 21). Nynishnii zastupnyk sekretaria RNBO peredbachav viinu z Rosiieiu shche rik tomu [The current Deputy NSDC Secretary predicted a war against Russia a year ago]. Texty.org.ua. http://texty.org.ua/pg/news/editor ial/read/55349/Nynishnij_zastupnyk_sekretara_RNBO_per edbachav_vijnu_z Tkach, V. F. (2016). Spetspropahanda yak informatsiinyi skladnyk hibrydnoi viiny Rosii proty Ukrainy [Special propaganda as the information component of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine]. Stratehichni Priorytety, 1(38), 99-109. Tolubko, V. B. (2003). Informatsiyna borotba (kontseptualni, teoretychni, tekhnolohichni aspekty): monohrafiia [Information confrontation (the conceptual, theoretical, technical aspects) [Monograph] (320 p.). NDAU. Turanskyi, M. O. (2017). Tyzhnevyk Voyenno-promyshlennyy kuryer yak dzherelo manipuliatyvno propahandystskoi informatsii u latentnii fazi pidhotovky Rosii do aneksii Krymu (2004-2013 rr.) [The Military-Industrial Courier weekly as the source of manipulative propaganda in the latent phase of Russia’s preparation for the annexation of Crimea (2004-2013)]. Viyskovo-Naukovyi Visnyk, 28, 216-227. Turanskyi, M. O. (2018a). Krym kriz pryzmu heopolitychnykh prahnen Rosii: Manipuliatsii suspilnoiu svidomistiu [Crimea through the prism of Russia’s geopolitical aspirations: Manipulation of mass consciousness]. Viyskovo-Naukovyi Visnyk, 30, 238-247. Turanskyi, M. O. (2018b). Kulturna ekspansiia Rosii v Avtonomnii Respublitsi Krym naprykintsi ХХ—na pochatku ХХІ st. [Russia’s cultural expansion in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries]. Hileya: Naukovyi Visnyk, 129, 61-66. Turovskiy, D. (2016, November 7). Rossiyskie vooruzhennye kibersily: Kak gosudarstvo sozdaet voennye otryady khakerov [Russia’s armed cyber forces: How the state is creating military hacker units]. Meduza. https://meduza.io/featur e/2016/11/07/rossiyskie-vooruzhennye-kibersily

136 FALSE MIRRORS TV Centre. (2015, March 27). Shoygu nazval SMI novym vidom Vooruzhennykh sil [Shoygu called the mass media a new armed service]. TVC. https://www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/64680 Volchek, D. (2015, March 21). Bezumiye kremlevskikh trolley [The frenzy of the Kremlin trolls]. Radio Svoboda. https://www.svo boda.org/a/26913247.html Vorona, T. (2014, July 30). Kiyevskiy programmist dobilsya ot SBU blokirovki krymskikh gossaytov [A programmer from Kyiv has urged the SBU to block Crimean government sites]. AIN.UA. https://ain.ua/2014/07/30/kievskoj-programmist-dobilsya -ot-sbu-blokirovki-krymskix-gossajtov-v-zone-gov-ua   Vsquare. (2017, December 28). From Internet brigades to troll factories. Vsquare.org. https://vsquare.org/from-kremlin-web-bri gades-to-russian-troll-factories/ 1+1 TV channel. (2018, January 29). Ekskliuzyvne interviu ekspratsivnyka kremlivskoi armii botiv, shcho sluzhyv Putinu z Ukrainy [An exclusive interview with an ex-employee of the Kremlin’s army of bots, who served Putin from Ukraine] [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2c B6VFQJMQ&list=LL79SAwFa-WE1mZ64b8cd2rg&index=3& t=9s Whelan, M. [@moira]. (2017, October 10). This is 100% accurate. Many of us inside of the State Department tried to help our colleagues in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere. Facebook was simply unresponsive [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/moira/st atus/917731843964850178 Yanevskiy, A. (2017, October 18). Ekspert: Deystviya trolley—chast globalnoy kibervoyny [The expert: Trolls actions is part of a global cyber war]. Voice of America. https://www.golosamerik i.com/a/facebook-ukraine/4076407.html Yegorov, I. (2017, May 18). Voyny i miry. Nikolai Patrushev: Ob Ukraine i SShA, kiberatakakh, Sirii i roli Sovbeza v istorii Rossii [Wars and Peace. Nikolay Patrushev: On Ukraine and the United States, cyberattacks, Syria, and the role of the Security Council in the history of Russia]. Rossiyskaya Gazeta. https:// rg.ru/2017/05/18/nikolaj-patrushev-ob-ukraine-i-ssha-kiber atakah-sirii.html

REFERENCES 137 Zeveleva, O. (2019, March 19). Neudobnyye dlya vsekh. Natsionalisticheskaya revolyutsiya v Krymu, kotoruyu zamalchivayet Kreml [Inconvenient for everyone. The nationalist revolution in Crimea, which the Kremlin is silent about]. Republic. https://republic.ru/posts/93306 Zharkov, Ya. M., Petryk, V. M., Prysiazhniuk, M. M. et al. (2013). Informatsiyno-psykholohichne protyborstvo (evoliutsiia i suchasnist): Monohrafiia [Information-psychological confrontation (the evolution and modernity) [monograph]] (248 p.). PAT Vipol.

 

 

Appendix The data from the sociological research conducted by the analytical centre Regional Programme Hromadska Dumka and commissioned by the Council of Ministers of the AR of Crimea. As part of the research carried out from 12 to 20 March 2011, 1,200 people were interviewed. The survey was conducted according to the methodology used for sociological research by the UNDP. Table 3

What Media Do You Trust the Most? Television. % of the Crimean Population

Regional

39

Ukrainian/National

57

Russian

31

European/American

3

I find it difficult to answer

19

 

139

140 FALSE MIRRORS Table 4

What TV Channels/Newspapers Do You Watch/Read the Most Often? National Television. % of the Crimean Population

TV Channels

July 2010

March 2011

Inter

63

70

1+1

43

51

ICTV

33

45

TRK Ukraina

18

23

Novyi Kanal

15

20

STB

9

14

RTR

5

7

5 Kanal

5

10

UT - 1

4

4

Others

28

25

Table 5

What TV Channels/Newspapers Do You Watch/Read the Most Often? Regional Television. % of the Crimean Population

TV Channels

July 2010

March 2011

Chornomorska

33

39

Krym

8

13

Kerch

3

4

Zhysa

1

3

ITV

1

6

Neapol

1

3

Others

3

2

APPENDIX 141 Table 6

What TV Channels/Newspapers Do You Watch/Read the Most Often? Russian Television. % of the Crimean Population

ORT

39

RTR

33

NTV

40

RTVI

10

Others

6

Table 7

What Media Do You Trust the Most? Newspapers and Magazines. % of the Crimean Population

Regional

44

Ukrainian/National

12

Russian

11

European/American

1

I find it difficult to answer

48

Table 8

What Media Do You Trust the Most? The Internet. % of the Crimean Population

Regional

8

Ukrainian/National

26

Russian

23

European/American

6

I find it difficult to answer

58

142 FALSE MIRRORS Figure 18 The Proportion of VKontakte Users in the Total Population of the Largest Crimean Cities (2013)

46,500% 53,500%

Don’t have an account Have an account

  Figure 19 The Proportion of Facebook Users in the Total Population of the Largest Crimean Cities (2013) 10%

90%

Don’t have an account Have an account

 

APPENDIX 143 Figure 20 The Number of VKontakte and Facebook Users in the Largest Cities of the AR of Crimea, by Age (2013) 400.000 350.000 300.000 250.000 200.000 150.000 100.000 50.000 0

до 20 Under 20

от 21 Вконтакте

Facebook

Over 21

VKontakte

 

Figure 21 The Proportion of Crimean VKontakte Communities by Loyalty to the Central Kyiv Authorities (2013) 2,100% 19,800%

40,600%

37,500%

Loyal Neutral Disloyal No politics

 

144 FALSE MIRRORS Figure 22 The Proportion of Crimean Facebook Communities by Loyalty to the Central Kyiv Authorities (2013) 2,200% 16,100% 20,400% 61,300%

Loyal Neutral Disloyal No politics

 

 

Short Biography of the Author Andrii Demartino, Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD), studied history at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and public administration at the National Academy of Public Administration Under the President of Ukraine. In 2017-2019, he did postdoctoral studies in political science at V. M. Koretsky Institute of State and Law in Kyiv. Since 2019, Demartino has been the Head of the Strategic Planning and Analysis Service of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine staff. Previously, he worked in and headed information and analytical units in the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine, the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. Demartino held the position of Information Adviser to the First Vice-Prime Minister of Ukraine and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. He is the co-author of Победа невозможного над неприемлемым [The Victory of the Impossible Over the Unacceptable] (Samit-Knyha. 2017).

145

UKRAINIAN VOICES Collected by Andreas Umland 1

Mychailo Wynnyckyj Ukraine’s Maidan, Russia’s War

A Chronicle and Analysis of the Revolution of Dignity With a foreword by Serhii Plokhy ISBN 978-3-8382-1327-9

2

Olexander Hryb Understanding Contemporary Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism

The Post-Soviet Cossack Revival and Ukraine’s National Security With a foreword by Vitali Vitaliev ISBN 978-3-8382-1377-4

3

Marko Bojcun Towards a Political Economy of Ukraine Selected Essays 1990–2015 With a foreword by John-Paul Himka ISBN 978-3-8382-1368-2

4

Volodymyr Yermolenko (ed.) Ukraine in Histories and Stories Essays by Ukrainian Intellectuals With a preface by Peter Pomerantsev ISBN 978-3-8382-1456-6

5

Mykola Riabchuk At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization ISBN 978-3-8382-1484-9

6

Marta Dyczok Ukraine Calling

A Kaleidoscope from Hromadske Radio 2016–2019 With a foreword by Andriy Kulykov ISBN 978-3-8382-1472-6

7

Olexander Scherba Ukraine vs. Darkness

Undiplomatic Thoughts With a foreword by Adrian Karatnycky ISBN 978-3-8382-1501-3

8

Olesya Yaremchuk Our Others

Stories of Ukrainian Diversity With a foreword by Ostap Slyvynsky Translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and Hanna Leliv ISBN 978-3-8382-1475-7

9

Nataliya Gumenyuk Die verlorene Insel

Geschichten von der besetzten Krim Mit einem Vorwort von Alice Bota Aus dem Ukrainischen übersetzt von Johann Zajaczkowski ISBN 978-3-8382-1499-3

10

Olena Stiazhkina Zero Point Ukraine

Four Essays on World War II Translated from Ukrainian by Svitlana Kulinska ISBN 978-3-8382-1550-1

11

Oleksii Sinchenko, Dmytro Stus, Leonid Finberg (compilers) Ukrainian Dissidents An Anthology of Texts ISBN 978-3-8382-1551-8

12

John-Paul Himka Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust

OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941–1944 ISBN 978-3-8382-1548-8

13

Andrey Demartino False Mirrors

The Weaponization of Social Media in Russia’s Operation to Annex Crimea With a foreword by Oleksiy Danilov ISBN 978-3-8382-1533-4

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