{"id":16696,"date":"2022-03-26T05:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-26T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/?p=16696"},"modified":"2022-06-11T07:21:36","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T03:21:36","slug":"outmatched-in-military-might-ukraine-has-excelled-in-the-information-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/outmatched-in-military-might-ukraine-has-excelled-in-the-information-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Outmatched in military might, Ukraine has excelled in the information war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, aired a video documenting the human toll of Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine, the images were so graphic they prompted an apology from a cable news anchor for having failed to warn viewers about what they were going to see.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video, which showed corpses being dumped in mass graves and bandaged children staring out from hospital beds, brought home the toll of the conflict in a stark, visceral way, leveraging support from Congress and intensifying pressure on the Biden administration as Zelensky appeals for additional military aid in his country\u2019s struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainian leader\u2019s plea to Congress<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 in which he appeared unshaven and grave-faced, in his trademark military tee \u2014 is the latest example of how the one-time TV star has overseen an extraordinarily effective communications campaign that has proven crucial in marshaling global support for Ukraine\u2019s fight against Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By playing up Russian brutality<\/a> and military stumbles, deftly using social media, and appealing to foreign leaders\u2019 emotions while challenging their policies, Zelensky has steered an information offensive that has yielded greater Western arms donations and wider backing for unprecedented economic sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sean McFate, author of \u201cThe New Rules of War\u201d and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the Ukrainian communications strategy \u2014 or stratcom, in military parlance \u2014 highlighted a shift taking place in modern conflicts, from a focus on munitions dropped to one centered in large part on messaging, media and persuasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRussia may be winning the shooting war,\u201d he said. \u201cBut Ukraine is winning the information war. That is the key to getting allies\u2019 support and sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The effort also reveals how Ukraine now rivals \u2014 and, in the West, has far outpaced \u2014 Russia in a field in which Moscow has been seen as a global leader. Unlike in the past, when Russia used information and disinformation operations to sway global events including the 2016 U.S. presidential election, experts say Moscow\u2019s effort is directed internally as President Vladimir Putin scrambles to shore up domestic support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The standing ovation Zelensky received from American lawmakers on Wednesday \u2014 like those he has received elsewhere \u2014 caps the 44-year-old\u2019s transformation from comic actor to wartime leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his 2019 election, Zelensky \u2014 who rose to fame as a bumbling but straight-talking fictional president on a popular Ukrainian TV show \u2014 installed associates from his TV production company into the country\u2019s top jobs. Policymakers from Ukraine\u2019s allies warned privately that it was a bad idea, but the in-house media expertise appears to have paid off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long before the Russian invasion, Zelensky embraced a communications strategy unusual in its disregard for standard diplomatic parlance, often generating discomfort among Ukraine\u2019s backers in the West, as he did when he repeatedly challenged the Biden administration\u2019s policy<\/a> of not sanctioning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe had the guts to defy Western leaders who were only giving him half a loaf and saying, \u2018Look, given the threat I\u2019m under, I should get a full loaf,\u2019 \u201d said John Herbst, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006 and now heads the Atlantic Council\u2019s Eurasia Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, those tactics have been elevated to a larger stage. In plain-spoken late-night speeches from his office, in sweatshirt-clad selfie videos filmed outside the presidential administration building in Kyiv, and in more formal videoconferences to leaders around the world, Zelensky has galvanized a strong global response to the invasion. He has 5.4 million Twitter followers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has tailored his appeals to different audiences, echoing the wartime words of Winston Churchill in a speech to the British Parliament<\/a>; referencing Canadian cities in an address to <\/a>lawmakers in Ottawa; and citing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech in Wednesday\u2019s remarks to Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cZelensky has the circumstances where his unique abilities as a communicator can really flower,\u201d Herbst said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who were in the room when Zelensky addressed a late-night summit of European Union leaders last month, a day after Russia began its invasion, credited his powerful intervention as inspiring them to impose significantly stronger sanctions than were initially considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His declaration that Ukrainian mothers were watching their children die on behalf of European values left some leaders in tears, the officials said. After Zelensky\u2019s remarks, the leaders approved teaming up with the United States to freeze the Kremlin\u2019s foreign reserves, a sledgehammer to the Russian economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While his regular video addresses are aimed at bolstering Ukrainian morale as people endure punishing Russian attacks, they are also directed at ordinary Russians he hopes might see his remarks on some of the few modes left to communicate to them, such as the Telegram messaging app. He speaks in passionate and angry Russian, telling Russian soldiers that if they surrender, they\u2019ll be treated well but that if they keep up the fight, they\u2019ll be tried as war criminals. He switches fluidly between Ukrainian and Russian. Speaking to Congress, he turned from Ukrainian to English to deliver the most urgent part of his appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication, calls Kyiv\u2019s messaging strategy \u201cvisually evocative, highly dramatic,\u201d helping people all over the globe identify with what\u2019s unfolding in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s efforts have been complemented by a grass-roots effort from within Ukraine and beyond, generating pro-Kyiv content and memes that have flooded English-language feeds. There\u2019s the St. Javelin<\/a>, an image of a female saint holding a Javelin antitank missile. There\u2019s the postage stamp<\/a> with an image of a Ukrainian soldier defiantly displaying his middle finger to a Russian battleship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stamp commemorates an incident early in the conflict, in which Ukrainian border guards on an island in the Black Sea were reported to have resisted Russian invaders. In a viral audio recording, a Russian voice warns the guards they will be attacked if they don\u2019t surrender. \u201cRussian warship,\u201d a Ukrainian is heard responding: \u201cGo f— yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelensky cited the story, saying that 13 guards had \u201cdied heroically,\u201d promising to recognize each with the title \u201cHero of Ukraine.\u201d A day later, the country\u2019s State Border Guard Service reported on its Facebook page that\u00a0the guards may have survived<\/a>, after Russian media reported that they were taken as prisoners. While what actually occurred on the island may not match the early accounts, it became a rallying cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukrainian officials have also aired videos of captured Russian soldiers begging for forgiveness for Moscow\u2019s assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are really excellent in stratcom \u2014 media, info ops, and also psy-ops,\u201d a senior NATO official said. \u201cI hope Western countries take their lead from them.\u201d \u200b\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One State Department official said that Ukraine\u2019s approach amounted to \u201cbasic wartime communication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to emphasize everything that\u2019s positive for you \u2014 talk up your enemy\u2019s losses, downplay your own,\u201d the official said. \u201cWhat\u2019s the old cliche \u2014 truth is the first casualty in war? States basically say what is most advantageous to them in wartime.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who served as the commander of U.S. Army Europe, said that as successful as Kyiv had been in shaping the Western narrative, it remained unable to persuade NATO leaders to embrace a no-fly zone or supply fighter jets. Still, \u201cit\u2019s been a million times better than the tired old fairy tales that continue to come out of the Kremlin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Russia\u2019s far more powerful military employs new tactics and massive firepower in its push to take Ukrainian cities, a closer look at the battlefield situation suggests a more worrying situation for Ukraine, one in which Kyiv\u2019s success in the information sphere could outpace its battlefield performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Ukrainians have taught a master class in information warfare,\u201d the State Department official said. \u201cMy only fear is that the power of the narrative could lead some to assume that things are going better than they are, which could hurt the Ukrainians in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about memes,\u201d the official added. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening on the ground is what matters most in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shane Harris in Washington and Paul Sonne in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, aired a video documenting the human toll of Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine, the images were so graphic they prompted an apology from a cable news anchor for having failed to warn viewers about what they were going to see. The video, which showed corpses being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16698,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16696\/revisions\/16698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geworld.ge\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}