Slavyangrad Analytica ☭

You probably noticed that after two weeks of silence [original post dates from 21.08.24 –ed.], videos began to appear in Ukrainian forums where the Armed Forces of Ukraine are shown delivering humanitarian aid to Kursk villages, conversing with the locals, and also showing how they stormed Russian fortifications on the border, accompanied by propaganda vehicles (from the loudspeakers “Russian Army servicemen, surrender!”), then all this is supplemented by interrogations of prisoners, where they tell how they were abandoned and everything else that prisoners usually say. You and I understand perfectly well that the Ukrainians are not doing this out of great love for the people of Russia, and there were probably enough horrors there. But the media creates the necessary image of what is happening, and only random leaks are ever knocked out of it.  This is exactly what an information war looks like. This is not the schizophrenia that has unfolded in the Russian patriotic blogosphere—with mass hysteria, calls for a nuclear war and a change in the constitutional order.  Who is the Ukrainian propaganda described at the beginning of the post aimed at? First of all, at Russians, and only secondarily at Ukrainians and Europeans. And who is Russian propaganda aimed at? At Russians. That is, both sides are fighting for the minds of Russians.  Why do Russian military bloggers need to do that? In two years, they have learned to squeeze strong emotions out of their subscribers—sometimes panic, sometimes joy—and they monetize this business. They repeat what Ukraine went through ten years ago.  They consider themselves “infowarriors”, but they cannot even formulate what their task is. I will tell you something unexpected: there is only one infowarrior there—the commander of one Chechen unit, who made funny statements every day about the fact that the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been halted; he was apparently trying to stop the panic. Plus several more resources that described the process of evacuation and organising the lives of refugees.  Russian infowar is not just weaker and stupider than the Ukrainian, it is really harmful. With its help, it is easy to destabilise the situation inside the country. Let's assume: three battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine enter the Bryansk region, and several drones simultaneously fly to Moscow: what do Russian media and the blogosphere do? The media show Putin's meeting with the President of Vanuatu and write a line about hundreds of thousands of fascists being destroyed, so that grandmothers don't run to the store for matches, and bloggers report on the advanced columns of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Moscow and demand that something be bombed, post photos of severed heads, look for traitors, and call on the spirit of Prigozhin.  I think that digital control and the fight against extremism on the internet, which is about to begin, was provoked not by foreign agents, but by these very partisan figures. It is simply not clear why they had to be fed for two and a half years, just so that they could now be clamped down on. https://t.me/russ_orientalist/18121