The role of fake news and disinformation in the Ukrainian war - ΚΕΔΙΣΑ

By Ioannis Geoirgiou, Junior Analyst KEDISA

The history of fake news is as old as the history of armed conflicts between ethnic groups. Specifically, one of the most known military general but also writer of war theory, Sun Tzu had stated in his book «Art of War» in chapter 3 that «Hence to fight and to conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence: supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting».Consequently, Sun Tzu had released the power of hybrid attacks and dangers during a conflict. Another known use of fake news was in the 1st Century B.C.was when in the Roman Empire, Octavian used propaganda against Mark Antony accusing him of being a traitor under Cleopatra’s influence. Roman public opinion was really affected by those accusations and that led later to his downfall and suicide after his defeat in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.(Strauss, B. (2022). However, the systematic use of fake news and propaganda in order to achieve specific political objectives were used during the First and Second World War and especially during the Cold War era. The KGB (The Committee for State Security) of the Soviet Union first of all had exclusive control of all their traditional domestic newspapers or radio stations that were state-controlled and besides that, during the Cold War KGB had initiated a policy of so called «active measures» whose main objective was the augmentation of USSR influence in the world. For example, during the Cold War the KGB had convinced many that AIDS was created in a laboratory in the USA and was released by the CIA to harsh minority communities (known as the Operation Infektion). However, not only the KGB but also the CIA had initiated a tremendous effort to ‘persuade’ countries to be on their side. According to the journalist Mark Hollingsworth in his book «Agents of Influence: How the KGB subverted Western Democracies» the KGB used to spend around 25 percent of its budget on active measures.

But before examining thoroughly the role of fake news and propaganda both by Russia and Ukraine, we first need to answer the following question: What exactly do we define as fake news? The answer is definitely not clear but according to Oremus (2017), fake news are «information that is designed to be confused with legitimate news, and is intentionally false» and can be characterized by two factors : the lack of truth and truthfulness. Moreover, Segara (2017) argues that the term «fake news» became particularly famous after the 2016 US presidential election and as a result the Collins dictionary declared it as the word of the year in 2017. Also, more and more people have been using the internet and social media every day and specifically as of 2023 4,8 billion people use social media every day representing 60% of the global population (Dean, B. 2025). As it was mentioned before, social media plays an important role in shaping public opinion, but we have to firstly describe what public opinion is. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2021) public opinion is «the predominant attitude of a community : the collective will of the people». Even before the start of the invasion of 24 February 2022, Russia weaponized disinformation narratives to gain political and strategic leverage. The large number of Russian armed forces on the border with Ukraine, some days before the invasion, was baptised as a special training exercise by Russian high -rank officials. Generally speaking , Russia has dual fake news narratives, one on the domestic level (which aims at the Ukrainian citiziens) and one on the international level (by affecting the international community). Even after 2014, in Ukraine there are pro-Russian journalists, websites and radio-channels that disseminate pro-russian narratives in Ukraine. One example of these narratives is the Ukrainian politician named Victor Medvedchuk who is considered to be a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. However, Russian propaganda narratives are not limited to this, they also use social media by creating fake profiles for Ukrainian soldiers spreading panic and distrust inside the army. Meanwhile, the presence of systemic Russian media outlets such as Sputnik and RT have augmented presence in the Balkan states, Africa as well as Latin America , where they further promote Russian perception about the war.

Moreover, since the start of this war Putin accuses Ukraine of being a Neo-Nazi state , so his special military intervention aimed allegedly at the de- Nazification of Ukraine. Besides that, Russian officials mistakenly accused Zelensky of having Jewish roots. This accusation, which was condemned by Ukrainian Jew communities , Jews that survived the Holocaust but also other historians, was produced by Russian information outlets. In his article in RIA Novosti( a state- owned media outlet), Timofey Sergeytsev( a Russian journalist) claimed that the Ukrainian nation should be wiped out because all of them were «passive Nazis». A statement that of course is not proved or verified by any historical or other indicator.

However, it is well known that Russia does not use just traditional media outlets but also other instruments for manipulating Ukrainian and Russian public opinion. One of which is Telegram. Telegram is preferred by Russian authorities because it does not have policies against the spread of disinformation and hate speech and is also very popular among Russian- speaking people. According to the research that ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) conducted on 357 pro-Russian Telegram groups between 24 February of 2022 and 14 September 2022, it was proved initially that a great number of references were directed for the Ukrainian refugees. In particular, all the refugee-related posts and videos had attracted 371 millions views and close to 3 million interactions in total. In those posts the most popular narrative was «the refugees from Ukraine not being welcomed in Europe» as long as Ukrainian refugees will be soon «pariahs» in Europe. Besides that, the second most popular narrative that was introduced in those groups was «Russia is taking care of refugees from Ukraine». In this narrative, Russian propaganda machine were referred to the so-called protection that Russia provided to Ukrainian refugees from the «Nazi related Ukrainian authorities». Following the previous claims the third most popular narrative was related to « Ukraine is mistreating civilians». This accusation which is related to the allegedly Nazi regime of Kyiv, it was portraying Kyiv as a regime that is using refugees as a “human shield” and that is the reason why it prevents them allegedly from leaving their cities. Moreover another 17% of these Telegram groups were depicting «Ukrainian refugees as a threat for their host countries». These posts were referring to Ukrainians as Nazis that would spread around Europe and they would also bring diseases. In those posts Ukrainians were named with the term : бешенцы ( which actually is a combination of the words refugee and rabid).

Besides that not only Russia but also Ukraine conducts disinformation campaigns to achieve strategic objectives in the context of the Ukrainian conflict. Ukraine during the war and especially at the start was promoting numbers that exaggerated Russian casualties in the battlefield. However, those reports by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky were significantly higher than the reports for casualties of independent organisations such as the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross. For example, according to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine the first months of the war the Russian casualties were estimated to be 50000 combats. This number was considered as extremely higher than the estimations of NATO and the Pentagon. These announcements had as a result to enhance the support of the international community for Ukraine’s defense.

It is crystal clear that the information is not just a combination of words that may affect people’s behaviour, it is data that most of the time has a very specific aim to affect the public opinion. In that end, armed conflicts around the world are more and more becoming indicators of that end. The power of information and the effect that it contains especially in war cases is tremendous. The war in Ukraine is a conflict that of course shifted all the balances in the world and especially in Europe, but it should be noted that the information narratives of Russia did not change significantly. Russia’s use of propaganda and fake information narratives has been an undoubtedly reality since the time of the Soviet Union.

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