On the day Russia re-invaded Ukraine, 38,000 new accounts were registered on the social platform Twitter and the web was flooded with lies from the four Kremlin propaganda sites rt.com, sputniknews.com, ria.ru, and kremlin.ru. Russia produces lies on a massive scale in every possible channel and shuts down those it cannot control. This is the answer to the question of why so many people in Russia still believe that there is no war in Ukraine. And some in Latvia believe it too.
The Russian propaganda operation on Twitter has been studied by the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Milan. The researchers compiled a list of forty keywords in English, German, Russian and Ukrainian, gathering more than 60 million tweets posted on the web between February 1 and the second week of the war. On February 23, the day before the active phase of the war began, 13,500 new accounts were registered on Twitter. The following day, when Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border, more than 38,000 accounts were created. So almost three times as many. These interlinked accounts posted similar or even identical content with pro-Russian propaganda. There is no war, civilians are being murdered by Ukrainian Nazis, Russia is under threat. In parallel, tweets were flooding in, which were ostensibly pro-Ukrainian but contained cryptocurrency hoaxes, links to non-existent websites and various forms of spam. Another massive campaign in the first week of the war came from the Ukrainian side, demanding the closure of Ukrainian skies, but it was mainly real Twitter users with real accounts.
Social media are part of modern warfare, they are an important tool in the manipulation of public opinion. Public support is crucial in war on both sides of the front. As the researchers conclude, at a time when public attention is focused on the tragic war in Ukraine, some see an opportunity to use social media to spread propaganda and engage in sophisticated online deception. For more on Twitter warfare, see the white paper "Suspicious Twitter Activity around Russia's invasion of Ukraine".
Russia lies on an almost unbelievable scale, but even more unbelievable is the Russian faith in Kremlin propaganda. There is no war - it is a special operation, the Bucha massacre was organized by the Ukrainians themselves. The belief in such brutal lies is due to the information blockade that is being implemented in Russia. However, a section of the Russian public also seeks access to news from behind the Iron Curtain.
According to the global data research company Statista, the most downloaded apps in Russia at the beginning of February were Persona, Zoom and AliExpress. So life as usual. But after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions, exclusion and censorship that followed, people are mostly downloading VPN apps that allow them to connect to the internet through proxy servers in other countries and bypass information blocking. For example, on March 15, VPN providers and the encrypted messaging service Telegram dominated the list of the top 8 downloaded apps in Russia in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, Air Alarm was the most downloaded app on the same day. An app that gives alerts about air crashes, chemical attacks, technological disasters and other civil protection alerts. This is the reality of war - lies on one side, horror on the other. And Russia spends billions on propaganda and lies.
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in one of his speeches: "Probably no one in the world has ever spent such crazy money on lies. But they did not take into account one thing. Where the path of lies needs to be paved with money and the result is not guaranteed, the path of truth is difficult, but the path of truth paves itself."
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