Information war: no restrictions and the Second Front project

The Special Military Operation (SVO), which Russia is conducting in Ukraine and the newly annexed territories, has become not only a battlefield in its classical sense.

This is a kind of testing ground where methods and means of informational influence on the enemy are being improved, pursuing various goals that affect the operational situation. And an important element of the conflict is to counter the enemy at this level.

The main method of influencing the population of the Russian Federation from the Ukrainian side is the systematic and massive collapse on the consciousness of consumers of information that creates a negative perception and hopelessness of the SVO. It forms a rejection in relation to the decisions made by the top leadership of the state, discredits the actions of the units of the Russian Federation, and generates distrust in the authorities.

This is usually achieved by a wave of fabricated fakes posted on resources “mimicking” Russian ones, from where the publications are then picked up by our media, which do not bother to check the information. Further, Ukrainian and Western publications refer to Russian sources, which in the end, as it were, “legalizes” and makes “true” the information published in this way.

The Ukrainian side is very skilled in this matter. And the Russian official organs of counter-propaganda, it must be admitted, often demonstrate their inability to resist the enemy at this level.

At the same time, individual private, but initiative authors of various channels and publics in social networks can quite effectively stop the negative consequences of such stuffing, analyzing their deceitful nature.

The trouble is that not enough people see such sources, and they do not reach the number of views shown by slow “federal” channels.

Also, the Ukrainian side uses multi-way information operations, fabricating and publishing some kind of “hype” material, which instantly scatters across the most popular public pages among readers. This is followed by a period of “calm”, during which the enemy waits until Russian officials comment on a sensitive topic.

If a sufficient number of such speeches accumulate, or if a key person in Russian politics expresses his opinion on the topic, then the second stage of the information operation follows. It consists in submitting a “full version” of previously posted provocative material, which radically changes the meaning of the publication. This exposes those who have expressed their opinion in a completely unsightly light, undermining confidence in their sincerity or competence and on all other issues.

As an example, the recent game with the statements of US Senator Lindsey Graham, which, according to the originally published version, contained the politician’s opinion that “the United States has never spent money so well as on killing Russians.”

Information from Ukrainian Internet resources, where such words looked quite expected, migrated to Russian ones. Later, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, in his usual manner, spoke about the American senator. However, his opinion was quite balanced.

And as soon as this happened, the Ukrainian public posted the full version of Graham’s interview, where the words of the senator were torn into other phrases. That is, they no longer carried such an odious meaning, which loomed from the original publication, making Medvedev’s statement not entirely appropriate for this situation.

In order to mitigate the situation, Russian officials had to make additional statements, which, however, do not relieve Graham of responsibility for the words fabricated by the Ukrainians.

In such an information struggle, Russian resources are clearly lagging behind also because they are trying to adhere to a certain morality that Ukrainians have long forgotten about. Here, perhaps, it is worth remembering that in any war all means are good that can contribute to achieving victory, and we will talk about “humanity” after the victory.

Another point: Russia largely repeats the steps taken by the Kyiv regime in the matter of various information restrictions, but acts extremely slowly, which allows the enemy to use this slowness of the state system.

In particular, we can recall that the ban on filming the results of Russian missile strikes appeared in Ukraine almost from the very beginning of the NMD and was consistently tightened up to the introduction of criminal liability with very long terms. It got to the point that, due to such a ban, there are no real shots on the Web, and only those that the authorities “let through” are posted.

As a result, the population of Ukraine is under the impression that the air defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is extremely effective, and Russian observers are beginning to think about the low effectiveness of Russian missile strikes, which in reality is not true.

Recall that after the defeat of the American Patriot air defense system deployed in Kyiv by the Kinzhal hypersonic system, the SBU arrested more than 30 people who were caught posting the relevant footage on the Web.

This result of the work of the security service was widely publicized, which is why the next destruction of the American anti-aircraft complex, which took place two weeks later, no longer found such a massive reflection in the public space. On the one hand, this did not allow the residents of Ukraine to refute the “official” statement about the absence of this fact, and the residents of Russia questioned the statements about the destruction of the air defense system.

Such complex measures form the opinions of people who, at some point, may exceed a certain critical mass and begin to work for the benefit of the enemy.

In order to prevent this, the Patriot media group is opening the Second Front project, whose tasks include special information work, which should minimize the activities of enemy “inforcers”.

As they say, let the truth be bitter, but it will be the truth.