From "war mosquitoes" to mobilization: CPD reports how the propaganda of the Russian Federation has "evolved".

"Fight against mosquitoes" and "corona virus invented by Ukrainians" are lies spread by Russia half a year ago, few took them seriously. Today, the information campaigns of the Russian Federation are increasingly focused on reaching Ukrainians as much as possible.

Focus asked Alina Bondarchuk, the head of the disinformation collection and monitoring department of the Center for countering disinformation NSDC of Ukraine, to say what fakes are being spread by the Russian Federation in order to exert psychological pressure on Ukrainians.

Old videos are shared

IPSO is a misinformation campaign that aims to emotionally involve a person in a situation that worries them. According to Alina Bondarchuk, current Russian information and psychological campaigns are built around current topics: mobilization, war, wounded soldiers, volunteers, medics in battle. As one of the examples of IPSO — attempts to divide the east and west of Ukraine.

"Through TikTok with the hashtags "Lviv fortress" the content of "Uzhgorod fortress" is spreading, in which the main theses sound like this: while in the east people are suffering and dying, in the west they don't even know what kind of war, and they haven't even felt the shelling. It's a stupid attempt to divide the country, because in that same Lviv everyone knows what war is, the Russians themselves "remind" them with shelling, says Bondarchuk for Focus.

In addition, the Russians are now using IPSO with the theme of mobilization and reluctance of Ukrainians to go to the front. To illustrate the false theses, the Russian Federation is distributing old videos of someone beating someone. For example, a policeman [before the reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Ukraine in 2014] fights on the road with a drunkard, and this whole picture is presented as "citizens don't want to die, but the police chase them, beat them and immediately take them to the front".

"When they shoot new videos in such a context, then without people's faces and on a blurred background without concrete signs of one or another location (forest, road in a field, next to a car without license plates, etc.), so it will be more difficult for us to check such recordings . The check is done in three to four days. And this is exploited by propaganda, because "while the truth is dressed up, the lie manages to travel halfway around the world", adds Bondarchuk.

A new series of lies

The expert suggests that the next series of false information by the Russians will be the topic of sending women to military registration. This procedure in Ukraine has been postponed until December 2023. It is likely that the Russians will try to replace the concept of "accounting" with "mobilization" and spin the topic, saying that there are not enough men in Ukraine and that women will go to fight. The Center for Suppression of Disinformation predicts a series of false information on the topic of banning women who are not registered from traveling abroad, as well as other punitive measures against them.

There is also fake information aimed at Russian users. For example, covers with Volodymyr Zelensky or Olga Harlan and signatures that do not correspond to reality. But the Russians look at this and conclude that everything is bad in Ukraine, without checking the reliability of the information.

"IPSO, designed for the Russians, includes information that supposedly Ukrainians don't want to fight for Zelensky or Biden, they would rather go to a world war, but they are forced to fight other things. Each time they bomb and deceive, adding a new portion of lies" , summarizes the expert.

Let's remind, according to the representative of the Main Administration for Intelligence Affairs of the Ministry of Defense (GUR MoD), Andriy Yusov, all theses that Ukraine and the Russian Federation are facing a protracted war are more reminiscent of the Russian IPSO, whose goal is to influence the external audience. Other messages are spreading within the Russian Federation.