Igor Rosovskiy adjusted his watchcap as he stood outside his home to walk his dog Piotr in the crisp Crimean night air. He tucked his ears under his warm wool hat and stepped out on his nightly stroll through downtown Odessa. His neighbor Iliana waved at him from her balcony as he passed by. A cigarette dangled from her other hand. Everyone has their evening rituals. Igor smiled and waved back. He had been working up the courage to invite her out for some coffee but life always seemed to get in the way. He worked at the emergency room at the municipal hospital and the long hours made it hard to start a new relationship. For now, Piotr would be his only companion.

Igor and Piotr followed their normal route. There was a park in the middle of the city that offered the pair a chance to enjoy the sights of ponds filled with ducks, and the sounds of small songbirds. Igor fed these ducks with some bread from his pocket, as he did every night, before finally deciding to head home. It didn’t take long to notice that something was wrong. The air smelled of smoke and ash. He could hear voices in the distance, their words unintelligible but their anguish apparent. Igor quickened his pace. The cries became clearer now. A mother was crying for help. Her house was on fire. Her child was lost. Where was the fire department? Where was the police?

Igor broke into a trot. The panicked scene came into focus. A house was on fire. A middle-aged woman kneeled next to it, her tears streaming down her cheeks. She pointed at her burning home. Igor tied Piotr to a nearby signpost and rushed inside. The heat was almost too much to bear. He wrapped his scarf around his face and searched through the embers for the child. Smoke filled his lungs. He pushed forward and there he found her, huddled on the floor of her bedroom closet to avoid the flames. Igor wrapped her in his coat and ran outside. He handed the girl to her mother then collapsed on the street.

A group of thugs approached him, with torches in hand. Their leader, a broad chested man with a thick neck and furled brow, pulled a lead pipe out from his black peacoat. “I’m a doctor,” Igor pleaded, “Let me help her!” The man in the woolen coat smiled and struck him in the face. “There is no help here for Russians and Jews like you.” Igor curled into a ball as they hit him with sticks and pipes. The last thing he remembered was the sound of Piotr barking before he slipped out of consciousness. 

This is a compelling account of fascist violence against Russian citizens. There is just one problem with this story. It isn’t true. There was a building fire in Odessa, but it was destroyed in a firefight between Ukrainian militia forces and Russian backed separatists.[i] Doctor Igor Rosovskiy and his tale are one of countless fabrications generated by Russian propagandists to justify an illegal invasion[ii]. These falsehoods did not resonate in the West but were very effective at manipulating their target audiences in Russia and Eastern Ukraine, where Russian media dominated the television market. While Igor’s tale was a falsehood, the emotions and violence that these fables stirred up were not. Ethnic Russians in Crimea, spurred on by Russian commandos and paramilitary forces, took to the streets to protest these injustices.

Russian media fed their domestic audience falsehoods that the Ukrainian government sent militias into Eastern Ukraine to attack, rape, and murder ethnic Russians. In this version of the truth, President Putin begged the Ukrainian government to protect these innocent people, but they refused. Their inaction, and the callous disregard of the United States to this humanitarian crisis, left President Putin with few options. Left with no other choices, he ordered the Russia Army to enter Ukraine in August 2014 to save the Russian people there and liberate Crimea. This was a complete farce, but it was an effective lie that most Russians believed.

The truth is whatever we tell you it its

The Second Chechen war taught the Russian Federation the importance of controlling the media narrative. President Boris Yeltsin permitted news outlets free reign in the first Chechen war. Their reports of Russia Army tactical failures and human rights violations sapped public support for the war. His successor, Vladimir Putin, did not tolerate such media freedom in the second Chechen War. Putin learned in Chechnya that the best way to win the battle for public opinion is to control the media and attack counter narratives. His information operations campaign in Ukraine is an evolution of these tactics. The only thing better than controlling the narrative is to make it up entirely.  

The first phase of this disinformation campaign began during the Euromaidan protests in 2013. President Vladimir Putin declared on television that the Euromaidan protest, and the subsequent special election in Ukraine, was really a fascist coup led by Russophones, antisemites, and Nazis.[iii] The Russian media echoed these themes in their reporting of protests, painting these protestors as fascist dissidents and neo-Nazis. No one dared contest his narrative. All of the top Russian news groups are connected to the Russian government. The government directly controls three of them, including the two most popular stations Channel one and Russia One. President Putin nationalized the fuel conglomerate Gazprom in 2005, which brings their subsidiary Gazprom media under his control as well.[iv] The last major news group, National Media Group, is owned by the Russian oligarch Alina Maratovna Kabaeva. Kabaeva is a close friend of President Putin, possibly his lover, and former member of the State Duma.[v] The Russian constitution grants its citizens freedom of the press but presently the media is a puppet for their President.

The Great Patriotic War

In 2013 President Putin faced accusations of electoral fraud and widespread protests calling for his resignation. Invading Ukraine provided him the opportunity to distract his people from domestic politics and focus on an external villain. The Ukrainian oppression of ethnic Russians and Jews was a perfect solution to his problem. It didn’t matter if these events actually occurred or not. The Russian information operations machine churned out reports about Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, hoping to evoke memories of the German occupation of Ukraine in World War II. Russian troll farms spread stories and manipulated photos of human rights atrocities to establish and reinforce these false connections. The tale of Doctor Igor Rosovskiy as related above is a real example of a fabricated atrocity. There are many others. The Russian media also accused Ukraine of conscripting child soldiers, strangling women, and murdering priests. ^[vi]

Channel One News interviewed a Ukrainian refugee in the beginning of the war who was fleeing from government oppression. She claimed that she witnessed Ukrainian soldiers rip a baby from his mother’s arms and nail him to a cross. It is easy to dismiss such an outlandish story, but the woman seemed very genuine, and Russians shared the story of the baby crucifixion across social media.^[vii] In another popular story, Ukrainian soldiers attacked two priests who were ministering to wounded Russian soldiers and murdered them in the streets. This actually happened but it was a Russian militia group who killed them.^[viii]

Some of these stories seem very outlandish and hard to believe. It’s important to remember that this internal information operations campaign was only successful because Russia controlled the media in their country and all the Russian language programming in Ukraine. A similar disinformation campaign would not succeed against Western or Ukrainian audiences. These fabricated incidents would not stand up to any level of scrutiny and these attempts at manipulation would likely backfire. The Russians would later manipulate western audiences on social media, but they had to significantly change their approach to do so. Their operations in Ukraine likely informed how Russia approached disinformation operations in the internet era and contributed to their successful electoral interference in several western elections.

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[i] Harding, L. (May, 2014) Ukraine clashes: dozens dead after Odessa building fire. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-odessa-building-fire

[ii] Radio Free Europe. (May, 2014) Odesa Doctor Or Random Dentist? Claims Of Atrocities, Anti-Semitism Face Scrutiny https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-unspun-odesa-doctor-dentist-false-claim/25372684.html

[iii] Putin gave this speech on television after Russia officially annexed of Crimea. http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6889

[iv] Jack, V. (October, 2022) Vladimir Putin Wounds Gazprom. Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-vladimir-putin-wounds-gazprom-ukraine-war-natural-gas-lng-energy/

[v] Dziadul, C. (August, 2022) US Sanction Head of National Media Group. Broadband TV News. https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2022/08/03/us-sanctions-national-media-group-head/

[vi] Russia Times. (August, 2014) Activists Seek Probe into Ukraine use of Child Soldiers in Donbas. https://www.rt.com/russia/177824-ukraine-child-soldiers-protest/

[vii]  Channel One News Russia. (July, 2014) A refugee from Sloviansk recalls how her little son and militiaman’s wife were executed. https://www.1tv.ru/news/2014-07-12/37175-bezhenka_iz_slavyanska_vspominaet_kak_pri_ney_kaznili_malenkogo_syna_i_zhenu_opolchentsa

[viii] Televiziyna Sluzhba Novyn (July, 2014) Bodies of priests killed by separatists found near Slavyansk https://tsn.ua/ru/ukrayina/pod-slavyanskom-nashli-tela-ubityh-separatistami-svyaschennikov-376976.html